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CINERARY  URN    FROM  THE   MUSEUM   OF  THE  VATICAN. 

Protitispiece. 


"We  believe  that  the  horrid  practice  of  earth-burial 
does  more  to  propagate  the  germs  of  disease  and  death, 
and  to  spread  desolation  and  pestilence  over  the  human 
race,  than  do  all  man's  ingenuity  and  ignorance  in  every 
other  custom  or  habit." 

From  the  report  made  to  the  American  Medical  Asso- 
ciation, when  in  session  in  St.  Louis  on  May  6th,  1886, 
by  a  special  committee  of  physicians  appointed  the  pre- 
ceding year  to  consider  the  necessity  for  cremation. 

"  In  the  same  sense  in  which  the  '  Sabbath  was  made 
for  man,  not  man  for  the  Sabbath,'  I  hold  that  the  earth 
Tvas  made  not  for  the  dead,  but  for  the  living. 
•  "  No  intelligent  faith  can  suppose  that  any  Christian 
doctrine  is  affected  by  the  manner  in  which,  or  the  time 
in  which,  tliis  mortal  body  of  ours  crumbles  into  dust 
and  sees  corruption.  .  .  .  Cemeteries  are  becoming 
not  only  a  difficulty,  an  expense,  and  an  inconvenience, 
but  an  actual  danger." 

From  an  address  by  the  late  Bishop  of  Manchester,  at 
the  opening  of  the  Social  Science  Congress  at  Manchester, 
Fngland,  October  1st,  1879. 


Digitized  by  tine  Internet  Archive 

in  2010  with  funding  from 

Open  Knowledge  Commons 


http://www.archive.org/details/earthburialcremaOOcobb 


PREFACE. 


This  little  volume  is  written  at  tlie 
request  of  the  Directors  of  tlie  United 
States  Cremation  Co.,  wlio  state  that  in- 
quiries for  a  work  of  the  kind  are  fre- 
quently made  at  the  Company's  office. 

That  cremation  is  steadily  winning  pub- 
lic favor  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  in  the 
United  States  seventeen  crematories  have 
already  been  erected,  and  the  remains  of 
over  twenty-three  hundred  persons  incin- 
erated. 

Most  of  this  work  has  been  accomplished 
during  the  last  six  years ;  and  the  friends 
of  the  reform,  as  they  recall  the  perplex- 
ities and  discouragements  that  attended  it 
at  the  outset,  may  well  congratulate  them- 
selves on  the  result.     " 

Difficulties    have    been    surmounted — a 


Aa  Preface. 

good  beginning  lias  been  made ;  and  to 
doubt  of  the  ultimate  trimupli  of  crema- 
tion would  be  a  disparagement  of  the 
intelligence  of  the  age.  AVe  do  not  believe 
that  a  repulsive  custom  like  earth-burial, 
though  deep-rooted  in  prejudice  and  shielded 
by  conservatism,  can  forever  bid  defiance 
to  the  laws  of  decency  and  health. 

In  the  time  that  is  coming  men  will 
marvel  at  the  anomaly  we  present  in  scru- 
23ulously  disinfecting  the  homes  of  the 
plague-stricken,  while  their  bodies  are 
placed  in  the  ground  to  contaminate  the 
earth,  the  air,  and  the  springs. 

As  our  subject  appeals  with  especial 
force  to  the  residents  of  cities,  whose  an- 
nual armies  of  the  dead  must  of  necessity 
be  disposed  of  in  the  immediate  neighbor- 
hood, we  have  considered  at  length  the 
cemeteries  of  New  York  and  Brooklyn,- 
and  the  dangers  that  threaten  therefrom. 
If  we  succeed  in  directins:  on  the  evil  but 
a  modicum  of  the  attention  that  it  merits, 
we  shall  not  have  written  in  vain. 

In  the  North  American  Hevieio  of  Sep- 
tember, 1882,  was  published  an  article  by 


Preface.  vii 

tlie  writer  ia  favor  of  cremation.  The 
arguments  then  used  have  been  strength- 
ened, not  weakened,  by  the  intervening 
years  :  the  conchisions  of  science  have  lost 
none  of  their  force,  and  the  grave  none  of 
its  loathsome  features.  For  this  reason 
we  have  retained  many  of  the  arguments 
and  examples  there  employed,  express 
permission  to  do  so  having  been  cour- 
teously granted  us  by  the  editor  and  pub- 
lisher of  the  Hevieiv. 


Augustus  G-.  Cobb. 


Tarrytown,  New  York, 
April  26,  1892. 


CO^^TENTS. 


CHAPTER  I. 

PAGE 

The  reinstatement  of  earth-burial  tlirough  prejudice 
and  superstition — Faith  in  the  j)ower  of  reUcs  of 
the  dead — Miracles  "WTought  at  the  graves  of  saints 
— The  reign  of  Ignorance,  Cruelty,  and  Fanaticism  1-18 

CHAPTER  n. 

The  conditions  surrounding  graveyards — Physicians 

favoring  cremation — The  suburban  cemeteries  on 
Long  Island,  N.  Y. — Increase  in  the  population  of 
New  York  and  Brooklyn,  and  the  annual  number 
of  deaths — Rapid  and  proportionate  growth  of  the 
cities  of  the  Hving  and  the  dead — The  injuries  in- 
flicted by  cemeteries  on  Newtown,  L.  I. — The 
danger  that  threatens  the  springs — The  Plymouth 
epidemic — The  contamination  of  the  drinking- 
water  of  Philadelpliia — Views  of  physicians  on 
these  and  kindred  subjects — Epidemics  of  typhoid 
fever  and  diphtheria  occasioned  by  the  pollution 
of  water  by  cemeteries 19-62 

CHAPTER  III. 

The  transitory  nature  of  cemeteries,  and  their  ulti- 
mate fate — Plagues  occasioned  by  disinterments — 
The  overcrowded  condition  of  cemeteries — Diseases 


X  Contents. 

PAGE 

resulting  from  their  local  influence — The  investi- 
gations of  M.  Pasteur  and  Dr.  Domingo  Freire — 
Bacteria  working  from  the  buried  bodies  to  the 
surface — Splenic  fever  and  yellow-fever  directly 
traced  to  this  cause — The  warning  of  Dr.  Freire — 
Emphatic  condemnation  of  cemeteries  by  a  com- 
mittee of  the  American  Medical  Association     .     63-88 

CHAPTER  IV. 

The  revolting  features  of  earth-burial  concealed 
under  a  mass  of  false  sentiment — Instances  of 
burial  ahve — Condition  of  the  overcrowded  Lon- 
don cemeteries — Some  surprising  statements  by 
Bishop  Coxe — Description  of  the  process  of  crema- 
tion— Objection  to  cremation  on  the  ground  of  its 
destroying  evidence  of  crime — Inconsistencies 
presented  by  monuments  in  cemeteries — Extrava- 
gance connected  with  funerals,  and  the  need  of 
reform  in  the  manner  of  conducting  them — The 
obUgation  imposed  upon  the  Hving  to  respect  the 
last  wishes  of  the  dead 89-124 

CHAPTER  V. 

The  progress  of  cremation — Revival  of  interest  in 
the  subject  in  Italy  and  other  countries  of  Europe 
— Distinguished  men  advocating  its  introduction 
— Petition  to  the  German  Reichstag — Cremation 
in  Japan — Advance  of  the  movement  in  the 
United  States — Crematories  and  Societies  in  exist- 
ence in  the  different  cities  of  the  Union — Friendly 
aid  of  Medical  Associations — Legislative  action 
favoring  the  reform — The  crematory  at  Quaran- 
tine Station,  New  York — Other  estabhshments — 
Work  of  Dr.  Davis  and  Dr.  Erichsen — Prejudice 


Contents,  xi. 


against  cremation  dispelled  by  witnessing  the  pro- 
cess— The  professions  represented  by  those  who 
have  been  incinerated — Bright  i^rospects  for  the 
future 125-151 

APPENDIX. 

View&. of  well-known  persons  on  the  subject  of 
cremation — Regulations  of  the  United  States  Cre- 
mation Co.  (Limited)  governing  incineration      153-173^ 


EARTH-BURIAL  AND  CREMATION. 


CHAPTER  I. 

The  Reinstatement  of  Earth-Burial  through  Prejudice 
and  Superstition. — Faith  in  the  Power  of  Rehcs  of 
the  Dead. — Miracles  Wrought  at  the  Graves  of  Saints. 
— The  Reign  of  Ignorance,  Cruelty,  and  Fanaticism. 

Time  and  experience  test  the  works 
of  man,  and  the  highway  of  progress  is 
covered  with  the  wreckage  of  countless 
inventions.  The  creeds,  the  dogmas,  the 
social  regulations  of  one  age,  may  become 
bywords  or  mere  curiosities  for  the  next : 
but  whether  they  stand  or  fall  they  mark 
the  civilization  of  the  era  that  fostered 
them ;  they  result  from  conditions  preced- 
ing them,  while  the  stream  of  tendencies 
in  which  they  are  inextricably  involved 
ultimately  determines  their  fate. 


2  Earth-Burial  and  Cremation. 

Men  do  what  tliey  can,  and  the  after 
generations  pardon  their  errors,  but  judge 
their  works  on  the  merits.  What  is  good 
{i.  €.,  fit),  lives ;  what  is  bad  (i.  e.^  unfit), 
dies — this  is  the  general  law.  When,, 
therefore,  a  custom  like  that  of  earth-burial 
has  existed  for  many  centuries,  a  strong  pre- 
sumption arises  in  its  favor.  Its  antiquity 
is  offered  as  an  argument  for  its  wisdom, 
and  the  case  passes  for  an  instance  of 
'^  survival  of  the  fittest."  Let  us  not  forget,, 
however,  that  if  we  are  to  respect  a  custom 
for  its  antiquity,  no  factitious  causes  must 
have  tended  to  prolong  its  life.  Resting 
solely  upon  its  intrinsic  merits,  it  should 
challenge  and  survive  the  scrutiny  of  unbi- 
ased minds. 

Thus  judged,  the  antiquity  of  earth- 
burial  avails  it  nothing,  while  our  resjDect 
for  the  custom  itself  will  lessen  in  propor- 
tion as  we  learn  how  it  was  established. 
A  prejudice  and  a  superstition — these  were 
the  causes,  as  we  will  hereafter  show,  that 
revived  the  obsolete  practice  of  earth-buri- 
al in  the  earliest  centuries  of  the  Christian 
era.     The  voice  of  wisdom  or  science  never 


Earth- Burial  and  Cremation.  3 

approved  the  use,  nor  was  the  rule  of  ex- 
pediency allowed  to  test  it ;  and  thus  it  is 
that  while  in  legislation,  science,  social  and 
political  customs  and  inventions  mankind 
has  made  prodigious  advances,  the  practice 
of  earth-burial  remains  to-day  with  all  its 
hideous  features,  as  at  the  dawn  of  a  new 
civilization.  The  cause  of  this  anomalous 
coexistence  of  progress  with  stagnation,  if 
sought,  is  easily  found.  With  intellect 
untrammelled,  the  children  discover  the  er- 
rors of  the  fathers,  and  so  the  follies  of  one 
century  may  be  corrected  by  the  wisdom 
of  the  next ;  but  nurtured  by  superstition, 
an  error  seems  capable  of  enduring  forever. 
Before  eyes  blinded  by  prejudice,  the  lamp 
of  reason  burns  in  vain  through  every  age ; 
and  folly  remains  folly  still  though  centu- 
ries roll  by. 

At  the  commencement  of  the  Christian 
era,  cremation  was  the  prevailing  custom 
of  the  civilized  world,  with  the  exception 
of  Egypt,  where  bodies  were  embalmed, 
Judea,  where  they  were  buried  in  sepul- 
chres, and  China,  where  they  were  buried 
in  the  earth.      The  Greeks,  fifteen  centu- 


4  Earth- Burial  and  Creination, 

ries  before  Christ,  invariably  buried  their 
dead  :  but  in  time  they  learned  the  ad- 
vantages of  cremation,  and  the  latter  prac- 
tice became  universal ;  suicides,  unteethed 
children,  and  persons  struck  by  lightning 
alone  being  denied  the  right.  The  Ro- 
mans, wh(j  had  orioinallv  inhumed,  bor- 
rowed,  in  turn,  the  sanatory  practice  from 
the  Greeks,  and  from  the  close  of  the  Re- 
public until  the  end  of  the  fourth  century 
of  our  era.  burning  on  the  pyre  was  the 
usage  regarded  as  most  honorable  and  ap- 
propriate. At  first,  it  is  not  probable  that 
the  funeral  customs  of  the  Christians  dif- 
fered in  any  marked  respect  from  the  cus- 
toms of  those  who  clung  to  the  ancient 
religions.  The  Christians  interred  in  the 
same  places,  and  they  afford  us  at  this  pe- 
riod a  curious  illustration  of  the  blendins^ 
of  the  ne^A'  faith  with  the  old,  by  painting 
and  engraving  upon  their  sepulchres  in  the 
catacombs  of  Rome  representations  of  the 
heathen  o-ods  and  o^oddesses,  and  even  the 
customary  invocations  of  the  deities  of  the 
nether  world.  In  time  the  difference  be- 
came o^reater,  and  no  sooner  had  the  Chris- 


Earth- Burial  and  Cremation.  5 

tian  I'eligion  become  a  power  in  the  state, 
than  its  followers,  always  inimical  to  cre- 
mation, made  haste  to  abolish  the  practice. 
They  were  influenced  in  this,  not  by  the 
Scriptures,  for  both  the  Old  and  New  Tes- 
taments are  silent  on  the  subject. 

The  causes,  as  already  intimated,  are 
found  in  a  prejudice  and  a  superstition. 
Cordially  hatins^  the  old  mythology,  it  was 
easy  for  the  Christians  to  dislike  its  fol- 
lowers and  their  customs.  The  pagans 
burned  their  dead ;  and  therefore  the 
Christians  stigmatized  burning  as  a  pagan 
custom.  Being  prejudiced  they  refused  to 
adopt  a  good  usage  that  was  in  vogue 
among  their  enemies ;  being  illogical,  they 
totally  disregarded  the  fact  that,  while 
some  heathen  nations  had  used  the  torch, 
others  had  plied  the  spade,  and  therefore 
cremation,  any  more  than  inhumation, 
should  not  be  taken  for  a  pagan  custom. 

Another  reason  contributing  to  the  res- 
toration of  earth-burial  was  the  belief  in 
the  body's  resurrection.  That  the  trumpet 
would  sound  and  the  dead  come  forth  was 
a  doctrine  literally  accepted  in  a  physical 


6  Earth- Burial  and  Cre^nation. 

as  well  as  in  a  spiritual  sense.  Again,  it 
was  part  of  the  Christian's  faith  that  his 
body  was  in  some  peculiar  sense  sanctified 
and  purified  :  it  was  ''  a  temple  of  the  Holy 
Ghost."  Though  language  like  this  may 
baffle  our  comprehension,  yet  the  23hrase 
sounded  well  and  had  due  effect.  The 
old  precept  of  one  of  the  Roman  Twelve 
Tables,  "  Hominem  mortuum  in  urbe  ne  se- 
pelito,  neve  urito,"  was  set  at  naught: 
inanimate  "temples  of  the  Holy  Ghost," 
by  the  score,  were  encased  in  the  niches 
and  corners  of  churches,  and  many  a  moul- 
dering monk  unintentionally  counter-bal- 
anced the  good  deeds  of  his  life  by  the 
disease  that  he  generated  after  his  death. 

The  superstitious  reverence  in  which  the 
tombs  of  saints  and  their  mortal  remains 
were  held  enhanced  likewise  the  predilec- 
tion of  the  faithful  for  inhumation.  The 
pious  Mussulman  turns  not  to  the  tomb  of 
the  Prophet  at  Medina  with  greater  rever- 
ence than  did  the  early  Christians  to  the 
grave  of  saint  or  martyr.  ''  In  the  age," 
says  Gibbon,  ''  which  followed  the  conver- 
sion of  Constantine,  the  emperors,  the  con- 


Earth-Burial  and  Cremation.  y 

suls,  and  the  generals  of  armies  devoutly 
visited  the  sepulchres  of  a  tent-maker  and 
a  fisherman.  The  bodies  of  St.  Andrew, 
St.  Luke,  and  St.  Timothy,  after  reposing 
for  three  centuries  in  obscure  graves,  were 
transported  in  solemn  pomp  to  the  Church 
of  the  Apostles,  which  Constantine  had 
founded  on  the  banks  of  the  Bosphorus. 

When  the  relics  of  the  prophet  Samuel 
were  carried  to  Constantinople,  an  uninter- 
rupted procession  of  devotees  filled  the 
highways  from  Palestine  to  the  gates  of 
the  city. 

By  a  heavenly  vision  the  resting-place  of 
the  martyr  Stephen  was  revealed  to  Lu- 
cien,  a  presbyter  of  Jerusalem.  In  the 
presence  of  an  innumerable  multitude  the 
ground  was  opened  by  the  bishop,  and 
when  the  cofifin  was  brought  to  light  the 
earth  trembled,  and  an  odor  as  of  Paradise 
arose,  which  instantly  cured  the  various 
diseases  of  seventy-three  in  the  vicinity. 
In  solemn  procession  the  remains  of  Stephen 
were  transported  to  a  church  constructed 
in  their  honor  on  Mount  Sion ;  '^  and  the 
minute  particles  of  those  relics — a  drop  of 


8  Earth-Burial  and  Cremation, 

blood,  or  the  scrapings  of  a  bone — were 
acknowledged  in  almost  every  province  of 
the  Roman  w^orld  to  possess  a  divine  and 
miraculous  virtue." 

The  grave  and  learned  Augustine,  the 
most  profound  theologian  of  his  day,  in 
attesting  the  innumerable  prodigies  which 
were  performed  by  the  relics  of  St.  Ste- 
phen, enumerates  above  seventy  miracles, 
of  which  three  were  resurrections  from  the 
dead,  occurring  in  the  space  of  two  years. 
Yet  he  solemnly  declares  that  he  has 
selected  only  those  miracles  which  were 
publicly  certified  by  the  persons  who  were 
either  the  objects  or  the  spectators  of  the 
power  of  the  martyr.  Two  books  were 
published  by  the  Bishop  of  Uzalis  contain- 
ing accounts  of  St.  Stephen's  miracles,  and 
a  Spanish  or  Gallic  proverb  has  been  pre- 
served which  says  that  "  whoever  pretends 
to  have  read  all  the  miracles  of  St.  Stephen, 
he  lies." 

Stupidity  and  credulity  were  finally 
carried  so  far  that  the  Emperor  Theodosius 
the  First,  in  the  year  386,  issued  an  edict 
forbidding    the    transportation    of    buried 


Earth-Burial  and  Cremation.  9. 

corpses  from  one  place  to  another,  and  tlie 
separating  of  the  relics  of  any  martyr,  or 
the  sale  of  the  same. 

The  delusion,  however,  was  universal, 
and  not  easily  controllable  by  laws.  It 
soou  became  customary  to  place  the  bones 
of  martyrs  under  altars,  and  St.  Am- 
brose would  not  consecrate  a  church  that 
possessed  none.  Three  hundred  years  after 
the  enactment  of  the  edict  just  cited, 
a  council  of  Constantinople  ordered  the 
destruction  of  all  altars  under  which  were 
found  no  relics  of  saints.  A  widespi'ead 
demand  for  the  remains  of  holy  men  en- 
sued, and  "  there  is  reason,"  adds  the  his- 
torian, ''to  suspect  that  Tours  might  not 
be  the  only  diocese  in  which  the  bones  of 
a  malefactor  were  adored,  instead  of  those 
of  a  saint." 

When  Constantine,  the  daughter  of  the 
Emperor  Tiberius  Constantine,  begged  of 
St.  Grregory  the  head  of  St.  Paul,  to  place 
in  a  church  which  she  had  built  in  honor 
of  the  apostle,  the  Pope  (St.  Grregory) 
sent  word  to  the  princess  that  the  bodies 
of  saints  shone  with  so  many  miracles  that 


I  o         Ea  rth  -  Burial  a  nd  Crem  ation, 

even  the  faithful  could  not  approach  their 
tombs  to  pray  without  being  seized  with 
fear.  In  suppoi't  of  this  statement  he 
informed  her  that  once  when  it  became 
necessary  to  repair  the  sepulchre  of  St. 
Paul,  the  custodian  of  the  place  on  attempt- 
ing to  remove  some  bones  which  were 
adjacent  to,  but  did  not  touch  the  tomb  of 
the  saint,  was  instantly  struck  dead  by 
the  Ghost  of  the  apostle,  which  appeared 
Ibefore  him  with  terrible  aspect. 

The  catechism  of  the  Council  of  Trent 
approves  of  the  custom  of  swearing  by 
relics,  and  kings  were  wont  to  enter  into 
compacts  and  to  bind  themselves  by  oath 
over  them.  These  exhibitions  of  unques- 
tionino;  and  childlike  faith  illustrate  the 
intellectual  trend  of  the  believing  ages, 
and  help  largely  to  explain  the  preference 
of  the  Christians  for  earth-burial.  The 
phantoms  of  the  grave  revealed  the  consti- 
tution of  the  invisible  world,  and  convinced 
them  that  their  reliction  was  founded  on 
the  firm  basis  of  fact  and  experience ;  while 
the  mouldering  bones  of  saints,  gathered 
with    reverent    care,    shielded    them    from 


Earth- Bitrial  aiid  Crematio7i.         1 1 

accident,  cured  their  diseases,  and  restored 
their  dead  to  life.  Well  mio^bt  the  hearts 
of  the  faithful  be  drawn  toward  the  tomb, 
when  it  yielded  such  precious  treasures. 
That  was  the  age  of  miracles ;  an  age  com- 
mon to  every  race  in  an  early  stage  of  its 
intellectual  development.  The  skeletons 
of  saints  became  of  priceless  value,  for  the 
manifestations  that  were  accepted  as  proof 
of  their  marvelous  power  drew,  even  from 
remote  countries,  riches  to  the  churches. 
A  "universal  belief  in  delusions  like  these 
continued  unabated,  through  the  long,  pro- 
found, intellectual  anaesthesia  of  the  Middle 
Ages. 

"  In  the  shadows  of  this  universal  igno- 
rance," says  Mr.  Hall  am,  ''  a  thousand  su- 
perstitions like  foul  animals  of  night  were 
propagated  and  nourished.  ...  It 
must  not  be  supposed  that  these  absurdi- 
ties were  produced  as  well  as  nourished  by 
ignorance.  In  most  cases  they  were  the 
work  of  deliberate  imposture."  During  a 
period  of  fourteen  centuries  thousands  of 
instances  of  miracles  being  wrought  by 
the   relics    of  saints,  or  at  the  graves  of 


12        Earth- Burial  and  Cremation. 

the  dead,  were  recorded  and  universally 
believed.  Those  with  faith  in  the  super- 
natural never  seek  after  a  sign  and  seek  in 
vain ;  and  miracles  cease  to  appear  only 
when  people  cease  to  expect  them. 

A  collection  of  all  the  records  of  these 
alleged  events  published  from  the  time  of 
Constantine  to  that  of  the  Convulsionist 
miracles  in  France  in  1727,  would,  with  the 
evidence  substantiating  them,  constitute  a 
vast  library.  The  student  of  history  is 
dumbfounded  as  he  reads,  being  even  less 
wonder-struck  at  the  absurdities  stated  as 
facts  than  at  the  overwhelming  mass  of 
testimony  brought  forward  in  their  sup- 
port. In  despair  he  naturally  asks  himself 
what  reliance  can  be  placed  upon  the 
sworn  statements  of  men  in  our  efforts  to 
discover  the  truth  '{  Scores  of  these  fables 
are  substantiated  by  more  evidence  than 
would  be  necessary  to  condemn  a  man  to 
be  hang^ed  in  a  trial  for  murder  in  our 
criminal  courts.  They  forcibly  illustrate 
the  unreliability  of  human  testimony  when 
not  corroborated  by  extrinsic  facts,  and 
show   with   what   qualifications    evidence 


Earth- Burial  and  Cremation.         1 3 

frequently  must  be  taken  regarding  sub- 
jects concerning  which  it  would  seem  easy 
to  learn  the  truth. 

What  chieily  interests  us,  however,  in 
this  connection,  is  the  fact,  established  be- 
yond all  question,  that  the  grave  by  adroit 
manao-ement  became  a  connectino;  link  be- 
tween  things  seen  and  unseen,  and  was  the 
most  potent  factor  that  the  Church  pos- 
sessed for  retaining  its  hold  over  its  pros- 
trate votaries.  One  readily  understands 
how  the  practice  of  inhumation  was  in- 
sured a  long  life  on  receiving  the  stamp  of 
priestly  ap]3roval.  Had  superstition  failed 
to  support  it,  there  would  yet  have  re- 
mained the  convincino^  aro;:ument  of  force. 
Even  before  the  dawn  of  the  fifth  century 
the  temporal  power  of  the  Church  existed 
in  fact  as  well  as  in  name,  and  public  opin- 
ion was  largely  influenced  by  the  views  of 
the  clergy, — a  body  extremely  jealous  of 
their  privileges  and  ready  to  brand  with 
the  stigma  of  heresy  any  practice  or  teach- 
ing believed  to  be  even  in  the  most  remote 
degree  capable  of  impairing  their  dogmas 
or  their  emoluments.     As  early  as  the  year 


14         Earth- Burial  and  Cremation, 

385  A.D.,  at  tlie  time  when  tlie  boues  of  St. 
Stephen  began  their  ^vonderful  work,  Pris- 
cillian  was  condemned  to  death  and  exe- 
cuted as  a  heretic  by  order  of  the  Emperor 
Maximus,  whose  action  Avas  ap]3roved  by  a 
Synod  of  Bishops  held  the  same  year  at 
Treves.  For  fourteen  hundred  years  after- 
wards the  faggot,  scaffold,  ax,  and  rack 
were  in  constant  use,  and  in  order  to  en- 
force belief  in  dogmas  and  creeds  which 
nobody  understood,  and  to  uphold  doc- 
trines abhorrent  to  common  sense  or  mathe- 
matically impossible,  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  human  victims  suffered  horrible 
torture  and  death. 

The  history  of  these  atrocities  is  written 
in  letters  of  blood,  and  they  constitute  foul 
blots  on  the  history  of  man.  These  evils 
were  rife  during  the  period  of  Church 
ascendency, — "  on  the  whole,"  says  Mr. 
Lecky,  "  one  of  the  most  deplorable  in 
the  history  of  the  human  mind.  .  .  . 
The  church  had  crushed  or  silenced  every 
opponent  in  Christendom.  It  had  absolute 
control  over  education  in  all  its  branches 
and  in  all  its  stages.     .     .     .     Every  doubt 


Earth- Burial  and  Cremation.         15 

was  branded  as  a  sin,  and  a  long  course  of 
doubt  must  necessarily  have  preceded  the 
rejection  of  its  tenets."  Mental  develop- 
ment was  arrested,  and  philosophy  and  rea- 
son, twin  antidotes  against  superstitious 
credulity,  for  centuries  were  almost  mute. 

We  are  reminded  of  the  words  of  Vol- 
taire :  ''  When  once  fanaticism  has  gan- 
grened a  brain,  the  malady  is  almost 
incurable."  The  Reformation  which  fol- 
lowed worked  little  change  for  the  better 
as  regards  toleration.  Neither  Catholic 
nor  Protestant  had  the  slightest  regard  for 
religious  liberty,  and  the  eternal  right  of 
the  individual  to  perfect  freedom  of  thought 
and  speech  was  a  truth  not  even  dreamt 
of.  The  equality  of  the  two  great  faiths 
in  this  respect  may  be  shown  by  the  fol- 
lowing examples  : 

When  the  noble  Bruno  was  burned  at 
Rome,  the  special  charge  against  him  was 
that  he  had  taught  the  plurality  of  worlds, 
a  doctrine  repugnant  to  the  whole  tenor  of 
the  Scriptures.  When  John  Calvin  caused 
Servetus  to  be  roasted  to  death  over  a  slow 
fire  at  Geneva,  the  offence  of  the  philoso- 


1 6         Earth- Burial  and  Crernatiori. 

pher  lay  in  bis  belief  tliat  the  genuine 
doctrines  of  Christianity  had  been  lost 
even  before  the  time  of  the  Council  of 
Nic^ea. 

As  late  as  the  year  1748,  at  Orleans, 
France,  a  man  was  hanged  for  blasphemy 
and  afterwards  had  his  tongue  torn  out; 
and  in  1780,  only  a  hundred  and  eleven 
years  ago,  the  Swiss  Canton  of  Glarus  fol- 
lowed out  faithfully  an  injunction  of  the 
Old  Testament  and  burned  a  witch  to 
death. 

^'  Heresy "  was  a  word  whose  elastic 
meaning  embraced  every  opinion,  every 
doctrine  touching  belief  or  conduct  that 
could  by  any  ingenuity  be  construed  as 
opposed  to  the  teaching  and  regulations 
of  the  Church  :  and  the  assertion  of  the 
Bishop  of  Lincoln,  in  1874,  that  a  revival 
of  cremation  would  destroy  belief  in  a 
final  resurrection,  would,  if  proclaimed 
from  one  to  fourteen  centuries  ago,  have 
received  universal  assent. 

To  many  it  may  appear  that  we  have 
wandered  unnecessarily  into  details  of 
Church  historv.  but  the  cause  is  found  in 


Earth' Burial  and  Cremation.        17 

the  oft-repeated  statement  of  the  anti-cre- 
mationists,  that  earth-burial  is  a  Christian 
custom  that  has  endured  for  centuries. 
We  cheerfully  concede  the  point,  and  ask 
what  credit  is  the  practice  to  the  Church  ? 
The  general  assertion,  that  burial  is  a 
Christian  custom,  unaccompanied  by  facts 
which  qualify  its  value,  confirms  thousands 
in  their  prejudices  against  cremation,  and 
reconciles  others  to  a  repulsive  usage  vio- 
lative alike  of  the  laws  of  health  and  of 
the  requirements  of  decency.  Earth-burial 
certainly  is  a  Christian  custom,  and  it  has 
endured  for  centuries  ;  but  when  we  con- 
sider the  prejudice  that  gave  rise  to  it  in 
Europe,  the  superstition  that  nourished, 
and  the  intolerance  that  ever  stood  ready 
to  defend — when  we  consider  these  facts 
in  connection  with  the  well-authenticated 
cases  of  plague  and  epidemics  that  the 
custom  has  occasioned, — one  would  think 
that  all  branches  of  Christians  would  gladly 
welcome  any  innovation  that  should  prom- 
ise to  consign  the  practice  to  a  well-deserved 
oblivion.  The  whole  question  of  the  dis- 
position of  the  dead,  as  the  advocates  of 


1 8        Earth- Burial  and  Cremation. 

incineration  have  as^ain  and  ao^ain  asserted, 
is  a  sanitary  and  not  a  religious  one. 

It  is  a  question  that  involves  no  religious 
doctrine,  and  it  concerns  no  phase  of  genu- 
ine Christian  faith.  It  seems  strange  that 
in  an  enlio'htened  ao-e  the  cast-off  emblem 
of  mortality  should  be  associated  with  a 
future  spiritual  state ;  for  the  blending  of 
the  material  with  the  spiritual,  by  merging 
into  a  heavenly  body  the  physical  attri- 
butes of  an  earthly  one,  betrays  a  gross 
conception  of  immortality  and  is  worthy 
only  of  a  savage  race.  Too  often  have 
Christians  incurred  this  error,  unmindful 
of  the  Apostle's  warning,  that,  ^'  Flesh  and 
blood  cannot  inherit  the  kingdom  of  God  ; 
neither  doth  corruption  inherit  incorrup- 
tion." 

Our  sanitary  welfare  and  our  natural 
affections  are  alone  involved  in  the  final 
disposition  of  the  dead,  and  the  method 
that  is  most  conducive  to  public  health 
and  the  requirements  of  human  love  is 
assuredly  reverential  and  best. 


CHAPTER  II. 

The  Conditions  Surrounding  Graveyards. — Physicians 
Favoring  Cremation. — The  Suburban  Cemeteries  on 
Long  Island,  N.  Y. — Increase  in  the  Population  of 
New  York  and  Brooklyn,  and  the  Annual  Number  of 
Deaths. — Rapid  and  Proportionate  Growth  of  the 
Cities  of  the  Living  and  the  Dead. — The  Injuries  In- 
flicted by  Cemeteries  on  Newtown,  L.  I. — The  Danger 
that  Threatens  the  Springs.  —  The  Plymouth  Epi- 
demic.— The  Contamination  of  the  Drinking-Water 
of  Philadelphia. — ^Views  of  Physicians  on  these  and 
Kindred  Subjects. — Epidemics  of  Typhoid  Fever  and 
Diphtheria  Occasioned  by  the  Pollution  of  Water  by 
Cemeteries. 

Oi^  investigating  tlie  condition  of  grave- 
yards, all  the  tender  sentiments  clustering 
around  the  tomb  are  quickly  dispelled,  and 
a  state  of  things  horrible  in  its  nature  and 
dangerous  in  its  effects  arrests  our  atten- 
tion. These  form  the  strongest  arguments 
in  favor  of  incineration, — arguments  indeed 
conclusive ;  and  those  who  believe  in  the 
practice  of  earth-burial  would  seem  to  be 

19 


20        Earth-Burial  and  Cremation, 

simply  ignorant  of  tlie  result  of  the  cus- 
tom they  advocate.  Scores  of  instances,  in 
cities  and  in  rural  districts,  both  in  our 
own  and  in  foreign  lands,  confirm  the  as- 
sertion of  Dr.  Adams,  of  Massachusetts, 
that  "the  Christian  churchyard  is  often 
a  contracted  plot  of  ground  in  the  midst 
of  dwellings,  literally  packed  with  bodies 
until  it  becomes  impossible  to  dig  a 
grave  without  disturbing  human  bones; 
and  the  earth  so  saturated  with  foul  fluids, 
and  the  emanations  so  noxious,  as  to  make 
each  churchyard  a  focus  of  disease."  Of 
the  one  hundred  and  seventy-one  answers 
received  by  Dr.  Adams,  in  reply  to  circu- 
lars sent  to  the  regular  correspondents  of 
the  State  Board  of  Health  of  Massachu- 
setts, both  in  the  United  States  and  Great 
Britain,  more  than  one  third  (sixty-one) 
gave  their  testimony  in  favor  of  the  adop- 
tion of  cremation  as  a  substitute  for  earth - 
burial.  And  this  was  seventeen  years  ago 
(1874),  when  the  subject  was  first  being 
agitated  in  this  country. 

To-day  the  medical  profession  is  practi- 
cally unanimous  in  favor  of  this  reform,  if 


Earth- Burial  and  Cremation.        21 

on  no  other  ground  than  that  of  public 
health.  At  the  Medical  Congress  in  Vien- 
na in  1887,  attended  by  some  of  the  most 
distinguished  physicians  of  the  world, 
when  the  question  of  cremation  was 
brought  forward  for  discussion,  there  was 
not  a  single  dissenting  voice :  all  who 
spoke  approved  of  it. 

At  the  outset  it  may  be  well  to  notice  a 
distinction  commonly  made  by  advocates 
of  inhumation,  whenever  the  dangers  aris- 
ing from  graveyards  are  mentioned:  they 
declare  that  cemeteries  established  in  coun- 
try districts,  for  the  reception  of  the  dead 
of  cities,  where  each  body  is  laid  in  a  grave 
by  itself,  are  not  open  to  the  objection  of 
being  overcrowded  or  dangerous.  To  this 
we  can  answer  that  all  suburban  cemeteries 
ultimately  increase  their  area  or  become 
overcrowded,  while  the  cities  for  the  use 
of  which  they  are  intended  expand  in  size 
until  in  time  the  abodes  of  the  living  and 
dead  come  into  close  contiguity.  When  in 
1785  the  horrible  condition  of  the  old 
Paris  cemeteries  had  rendered  the  sections 
where  they  were  located  unfit  for  habita- 


22        Earth- Burial  and  Cremation, 

tion,  the  government  ordered  them  to  be 
closed,  and  subsequently  established  four 
new  suburban  burial-grounds,  viz. :  Pere 
la  Chaise,  Montparnasse,  Montmartre,  and 
Vaugirard.  Since  these  were  opened  they 
have  received  in  the  aggregate  a  million 
and  a  half  of  bodies.  Not  only  are  they 
to-day  terribly  overcrowded,  but  by  the 
growth  of  the  city  they  have  become  intra- 
mural, and  a  report  of  the  French  Academy 
of  Medicine  states  that  the  putrid  emana- 
tions of  the  first  three  have  caused  fright- 
ful diseases  of  the  throat  and  lungs,  to 
which  very  many  persons  fall  victims 
every  year.  The  conditions  giving  rise  to 
these  evils  exist,  and  are  working  inevita- 
bly toward  the  same  fatal  end  in  the  ceme- 
teries that  to-day  receive  the  dead  of  New 
York  and  Brooklyn.  When  we  realize 
how  these  cities  of  the  livino:  and  the  dead 
are  increasing  in  size  and  approaching  each 
other,  additional  significance  is  given  to 
facts  illustratino;  the  evils  of  inhumation ; 
and  a  mere  glance  at  the  condition  of 
tilings   existing  in  this   vicinity    warrants 


Earth- Burial  and  Cremation.         23 

our  apprehension  that  the  public  health  is 
threatened. 

At  the  present  time,  about  four  thousand 
acres  of  land  in  the  immediate  vicinity  of 
New  York  and  Brooklyn  are  exempt  from 
taxation,  and  constitute  the  several  ceme- 
teries. Within  them  all  some  sixty  thousand 
bodies  are  annually  interred.  Most  of 
these  cemeteries  are  ororanized  under  the 
act  of  the  Legislature  of  the  State  of  New 
York  of  April  27,  1847,  and  the  amend- 
ments thereto,  for  the  Incorporation  of 
Kural  Cemetery  Associations.  The  greater 
number  of  them  are  located  on  Long 
Island,  and  ■  on  the  land  side  they  almost 
environ  the  city  of  Brooklyn.  By  the  aid 
of  statistics  and  official  data,  let  us  consider 
their  area  and  rapid  growth,  and  the 
marked  inflaence  upon  them  of  the  increas- 
ing population  of  the  two  cities.  A  glance 
at  the  following  table  shows  the  popula- 
tion of  New  York  and  Brooklyn  in  1890, 
the  average  death-rate  per  one  thousand 
inhabitants,  and  the  total  number  of 
deaths. 


24 


Earth-Burial  and  Cremation, 


1890. 

POPULA- 
TION. 

DEATH-RATE 
PER    1,000   IN- 
HABITANTS. 

TOTAL,  NUM- 
BER OP 
DEATHS. 

New  York  City, 
Brooklyn, 

1,631,232  * 
853,945  * 

24.58 
23.22 

40,103 
19,827 

Population    of 
both  cities, 

2,485,177 

Average 
death-rate 
for^both      23.90 

Total 
deaths  in 

dties,       59,930 

On  examining  the  above  table  the  ques- 
tion at  once  arises  as  to  the  disposition 
annually  made  of  this  formidable  army  of 
the  dead.  Over  two  thirds  of  the  number 
are  buried  in  the  six  cemeteries  mentioned 
in  the  following  list.  Only  one  of  the  six 
has  been  open  over  forty-three  years,  and 
yet   within  their  borders   are  buried  the 

*  On  account  of  the  dispute  that  has  arisen,  and  the 
uncertainty  that  exists  regarding  the  jDopulation  of  the 
two  cities,  it  may  be  weU  to  state  that  the  figures  given 
above  for  New  York  are  according  to  the  census  of  July 
1,  1890,  made  by  the  Health  Department,  and  recorded 
in  the  Bureau  of  Vital  Statistics.  The  Federal  census  of 
June,  1890,  placed  the  population  at  1,513,501,  and  the 
Municipal  (pohce)  census  of  October,  1890,  at  1,710,715. 
The  population  as  given  above  for  Brooklyn  is  according 
to  the  Municipal  census  of  November,  1890  :  the  Federal 
census  of  June,  1890,  made  the  population  806,343. 

Since  the  above  was  written  the  State  census  of  Feb- 
ruary 1892  has  been  taken,  which  places  the  population 
of  New  York  City  at  1,801,739,  and  that  of  Brooklyn  at 
930,633  inliabitants. 


Earth- Burial  and  Cremation,        25 

remains  of  over  482,000  more  persons  than 
live  in  Brooklyn  to-day. 


CEMETERIES. 

OPENED. 

ACRES. 

BURIALS        TOTAL 
1890.         BURIALS. 

Greenwood, 

Calvary, 

Cypress  Hills, 

Evergreens, 

Lutheran, 

Woodlawn, 

1840 
1848 
1848 
1851 
1852 
1865 

474 

214* 

400 

400 

400 

400 

5,713 

18,487 
2,000 
6,078 
8,385 
2,389 

259,893 
585,000 
130,000 
115,701 
208,000 
37,952 

Total, 

2,288 

43,053 

1,336,546 

We  have  selected  thoroughly  represen- 
tative cemeteries,  containing  all  classes  and 
conditions  of   men,  from   Greenwood  and 


*  This  is  the  number  of  acres  in  actual  use  for  cemetery 
purposes,  and  exempt  from  taxation.  The  Calvary  Cor- 
poration also  owns  about  thirty-tw^o  acres  adjacent  to 
the  cemetery,  on  which  it  at  present  pays  taxes.  These 
figures,  together  with  the  total  number  of  burials  in 
Calvary,  are  obtained  from  Reports  made  to  the  New- 
toAvn  Board  of  Health.  From  another  source  we  learn 
that  all  the  land  now  owned  by  this  cemetery  association 
amounts  to  three  hundred  acres,  and  that  the  burials  up 
to  January  1,  1891,  amounted  to  450,000.  The  New 
York  Slim  of  December  20,  1891,  in  an  article  entitled 
"  A  Real  City  of  the  Dead,"  gives  the  estimate  made  six 
years  ago  by  a  member  of  the  Newtown  Health  Board, 
Tvhich  placed  the  number  of  interments  in  Calvary  at 
that  time  at  485,000.  The  yearly  number  of  interments 
since  then  has  averaged  17,000,  which  would  bring  the 
total  number  at  the  present  time  up  to  585,000,  as  stated^ 


26        Earth- Burial  and  Cre^nation, 

Woocllawn,  where  the  bodies  of  the  rich 
rest  under  magnificent  monumentSj  to  the 
free  section  of  Calvary,  where  over  four- 
teen hundred  of  the  poor  received  free 
burial  in  1890.  The  following  table 
shows  the  rapid  increase  in  the  size  of  the 
two  cities,  and  explains  how  it  became 
possible  for  a  joint  population  that  in  1840 
numbered  but  350,000  souls  to  supply  six 
cemeteries,  in  fifty  years,  with  over  1,336,- 
000  bodies. 


POPULATION. 

1840. 

1850. 

1870. 

1890. 

New  York  City, 
Brooklyn, 

312,710 
36,233 

515,547 
96,850 

942,292 
396,099 

1,631,232 
853,945 

Total  both  cities 

348,943 

612,397 

1,338,391 

2,485,177 

We  see  from  this  table  that  the  united 
population  of  the  two  cities  is  over  seven 
times  as  2:reat  as  it  w^as  in  1840;  and  its 
effect,  in  twenty  years,  on  these  six  ceme- 
teries will  be  to  increase  by  a  million  addi- 
tional bodies  the  1,336,000  already  received. 
Brooklyn  is  over  twenty-three  times  as 
large  to-day  as  it  was  fifty  years  ago,  when 
the  first  interment  was  made  in  Greenwood; 


Earth- Burial  and  Cremation.         27 

and,  as  a  natural  consequence,  this  ceme- 
tery, once  suburban,  has  become  intra- 
mural. It  need  surprise  no  one  to  learn 
that  its  exhalations  have  been  complained 
of  in  South  Brooklyn,  and,  considering  the 
thousands  annually  interred  within  its 
grounds,  and  the  increasing  density  of 
population,  we  can  readily  believe  that  the 
evil,  instead  of  diminishing,  will  increase. 
To  support  and  illustrate  our  argument  we 
have  cited  only  six  cemeteries ;  but  we 
could  easily  extend  the  list.  The  names 
of  thirty  additional  cemeteries  could  be 
given,  located,  on  an  average,  as  near 
the  two  cities  as  are  the  six  already 
mentioned,  and  ranging  from  one  acre 
to  one  hundred  and  seventy  acres  in  ex- 
tent. In  these  several  cemeteries,  from 
a  few  hundred  to  over  a  hundred  thousand 
bodies  have  been  interred.  Thus,  the 
Cemetery  of  the  Holy  Cross  in  Flatbush, 
on  the  outskirts  of  Brooklyn,  contains  sixty 
acres.  It  was  opened  in  1849,  and  since 
1870,  109,000  interments  have  been  made 
there.  This  is  an  averasre  of  over  five 
thousand  bodies  a  year ;  and  from  ninety 


2  8         Earth-Burial  a7id  Creination. 

to  ninety-five  permits  a  week  for  interments 
in  this  cemetery  aiv  issued  by  the  Health 
Department  of  Brooklyn.  St.  John's  Ceme- 
tery. Middle  Village.  Xewtown.  Lono: 
Island,  was  laid  out  in  1SS2,  and  contains 
one  hundred  and  seventy  acres.  Previous 
to  being  devoted  to  this  purpose,  the  land 
was  assessed  at  8--.0<J0.  Xow  it  is  exempt 
from  taxation,  and  dtiring  the  nine  years 
that  it  has  been  opened  twentv-two  hun- 
di^ed  bodies  have  Ijeen  buried  there.  Mount 
Olivet  comprises  73^^  acres, "^  in  which. 
about  lifty-live  hundred  inteiTuents  have 
been  made.  In  Salem  Fields  Cemetery, 
Jamaica  Avenue,  eleven  thousand  bodies 
have  been  laid  away.  In  the  Lutheran 
Cemetery  it  is  estimated  bv  the  local 
Health  Board  that  fifteen  thousand  are 
buried  every  year. 

The  injury  infiicted  by  great  burial- 
places  cm  the  nei^'hljorhood  where  they 
are  located,  is  strikingly  exemplified  in  the 
case  <jf   Xewtown.  Long  Island.     TTithin 

*  Tliis  is  the  acreage  as  given  on  a  map  in  the  County 
Clerk's  omce  at  XewTo^vn.  An  official  report  tliat  ^^e 
have  recently  seen,  states  that  tliis  cemetery  contains 
about  ninety  acres. 


Ea rth -  Burial  and  Cremation .        2 9 

this  township  are  twenty-two  cemeteries, 
including  four  among  the  largest  of  those 
that  we  have  mentioned.  A  map  made  by 
Surveyor  Hyatt,  and  on  file  in  the  County 
Clerk's  office,  shows  that  they  embrace 
1,304.73  acres  of  land  within  the  town- 
ship. Cemeteries,  however,  gradually  ex- 
tend their  area  ;  and  a  Report  that  has  been 
made  to  the  Newtown  Board  of  Health 
shows  that  these  twenty-two  cemeteries 
now  contain  1,979  acres  of  land,  of  which 
1,774  acres  are  within  the  township.  All 
of  this  land  is  by  law  exempt  from  taxa- 
tion, and  much  of  it  is  as  desirable  as 
neighboring  farm  land  assessed  at  $150  an 
acre.  Could  it  be  taxed,  the  Report  just 
quoted  declares  that  a  fair  valuation  for 
assessment  purposes  would  amount  to 
$261,650. 

Thirty-five  thousand  of  the  dead  of  New 
York  and  Brooklyn  are  annually  brought 
into  this  township  for  burial.  With 
hardly  an  exception,  these  were  in  life 
strangers  to  the  place,  and  in  no  way  identi- 
fied with  its  interests.  They  cared  nothing 
and  they  did  nothing  for  the  place   while 


30        Earth- Burial  and  CreTnation, 

living,  but  they  become  a  menace  and  a 
detriment  to  it  wlien  dead.  Within  fifty 
years,  1,385,000  bodies  have  been  buried 
in  this  little  township,*  and  if  existing  con- 
ditions persist,  less  than  thirty  years  will 
add  to  that  number  a  million  more. 

Newtown  has  an  area  of  23f  square 
miles,  equivalent  to  14,960  acres ;  it  con- 
tains about  17,000  inhabitants.  As  already 
said,  1,774  acres,  or  almost  one  eighth  of 
the  town,  is  occupied  by  the  cemeteries, 
which  include  205  acres  more  across  the 
township  lines.  For  every  living  inhabi- 
tant there  are  eighty  dead  bodies.  In 
other  words,  the  number  of  the  dead  buried 
within  these  cemeteries  exceeds  by  over 
46,000  the  combined  population,  in  1870, 
of  the  cities  of  New  York  and  Brooklyn. 

*  As  this  statement  to  many  readers  may  seem  to  be 
an  exaggeration,  it  is  well  to  mention  our  authority  for 
making  it.  A  Report  made  to  the  Newtown  Board  of 
Health  gives  the  total  number  of  burials  in  the  township 
up  to  January  1,  1888,  as  1,245,000,  and  the  average 
annual  number  of  interments  during  the  preceding  seven 
years  as  35,000.  This  average,  maintained  for  four  years 
more  (viz.,  until  January  1,  1892),  would  swell  the  grand 
total  of  burials  to  1,385,000,  as  estimated  above.  Cal- 
vary, the  oldest  and  most  crowded  of  the  cemeteries  in 
Newtown,  has  been  open  only  forty-four  years. 


Earth- Burial  and  Cremation.        3  r 

These  appalling  facts  show  the  grievous 
wrong  that  is  constantly  being  inflicted 
upon  IS^ewtown ;  and  with  an  eloquence 
that  needs  no  reinforcement,  they  bespeak 
judgment  of  condemnation  on  a  community 
that  boasts  of  its  enlightenment,  its  love  of 
justice,  and  its  regard  for  sanitary  laws. 

The  proximity  of  some  of  the  cemeteries 
to  one  another  is  shown  in  the  following 
table : 

"  Distance  from  Old  Calvary  to  New  Calvary,  East, 
2,080  feet ;  extending  both  sides  of  two  important 
roads. 

"  Mount  Olivet  from  New  Calvary,  just  one  mile,. 
=  5,280  feet. 

"  Betts  Cemetery  from  New  Calvary,  |  of  a  mile,  =r 
1,320  feet. 

"Betts  Cemetery  from  Cemetery  of  Device  of  Long 
Island,  1,350  feet. 

"  Cemetery  of  Device  from  Mount  Olivet,  1,400  feet. 

"  Mount  Olivet  and  Lutheran  cemeteries  adjoin  each 
other. 

"  Lutheran  from  St.  John's,  three  fourths  of  a  mile. 

"  Cypress  Hills  from  Lutheran,  one  half  mile. 

*'  Evergreen  from  Cypress  Hills,  one  haK  mile." 

From  an  elaborate  E-eport  on  the  ceme- 
teries, compiled  by  the  town  officials,  for 
submission  to  the  State  Legislature,  we 
learn  that  in  the  old  portion  of    Calvary 


32         Earth- Burial  and  Cremation, 

about  four  thousand  dead  bodies  are 
buried  to  the  acre ;  equiv^alent  to  one 
dead    body    for    every    ten    square    feet. 

One  of  the  physicians  of  the  Health 
Board  of  Newtown  informs  us  that  the 
poor  who  receive  free  burial  in  Calvary 
are  interred  in  trenches,  seven  feet  wide, 
twelve  or  more  feet  deep,  and  a  whole 
cemetery  block  (about  two  hundred 
feet)  in  length ;  in  these  trenches,  the 
coffins,  with  a  few  inches  of  earth  be- 
tween them,  are  closely  packed  in  tiers. 
As  only  a  small  portion  of  a  trench  is 
open  at  one  time,  it  resembles  simply  a 
deep  pit  about  three  times  the  width  of 
an  ordinary  grave.  In  it  the  coffins  are 
placed  one  above  another  with  a  thin 
covering  of  earth  over  them,  and  a  por- 
tion of  the  pit  is  temporarily  left  open 
in  readiness  for  future  interments.  As 
additional  coffins  fill  up  this  vacant 
space,  the  trench  is  gradually  extended, 
and  the  earth  that  is  excavated  on  the 
one  side  serves  to  cover  up  the  coffins  on 
the  other.  We  make  mention  of  these 
facts    with  no    intention    of  blaming  the 


Earth  -  Burial  a  nd  Cremation.        3  3 

authorities  of  Calvary,  whose  charity 
affords  free  burial  to  hundreds  of  the 
poor  who  otherwise  would  be  buried  in 
Potter's  Field.  It  is  the  custom  of 
earth-burial  that  we  war  against,  a  cus- 
tom which,  in  the  case  of  the  very  poor, 
renders  a  resort  to  this  system  of 
trenches  inevitable. 

In  this  connection  we  should  state 
that,  in  most  of  the  large  cemeteries,  the 
purchaser  of  a  single  grave  has  the  right 
of  making  in  it  four  or  five  interments ; 
and  as  hundreds  of  these  graves  are  dug 
so  closely  together  in  rows  that  their 
head-stones  nearly  touch  one  another, 
they  are  almost  as  objectionable  from  a 
sanitary  point  of  view  as  are  the  trenches 
that  we  have  mentioned.  In  fact  when 
a  row  of  these  private  graves  has  re- 
ceived all  the  bodies  that  are  allowed  to 
be  buried  in  them,  the  ground  so  occu- 
pied is  in  the  same  horrible  condition  as 
the  ground  that  has  been  used  for  a 
trench. 

An  employee,  of  Calvary  Cemetery 
recently  assured  us  that  the  trenches  for 


34        Earth- Burial  and  Cremation, 

free  interments  are  but  nine  feet  deep^ 
and  contain  but  five  tiers  of  coffins.  It 
is  but  right  for  us  to  mention  this  state- 
ment, although  it  conflicts  with  the  fol- 
lomng  Committee  report  which  we  are 
tempted  to  present  in  full. 

"  To   THE  Honorable  Board  of  Health 
OF  THE  Town  of  Newtown. 

"  Gentlemen  :  The  undersigned,  your 
Committee,  appointed  at  your  meeting  of 
January  27th,  1886,  respectfully  report  as 
follows : 

"  That  they  have  visited  Calvary  Cemetery 
on  the  28th  day  of  January,  1886,  and  in 
obedience  with  the  resolutions  which  called 
for  the  appointment  of  this  Committee, 
made  an  examination  of  the  various  modes 
of  burial  in  said  cemetery. 

"  Your  committee  first  inspected  the  receiv- 
ing vault,  and  found  the  same  in  good  con- 
dition. From  there  we  went  to  the  poor  or* 
free  ground.  The  same  is  located  in  the  old 
Cemetery  in  the  immediate  neighborhood  of 
the  fence,  which  divides  the  Cemetery  from 
the  Road.  The  method  of  burial  here  is  as 
follows : 


Earth- Burial  and  Cremation.        35 

"  A  trench  is  dug,  beginning  at  the  sidewalk, 
about  ten  feet  wide  and  fifteen  feet  deep- 
In  this  the  bodies  are  deposited  one  above 
the  other,  until  near  the  surface  of  the  ground; 
when  a  little  earth  is  thrown  over  it ;  after 
this,  the  same  process  is  continued  one  tier 
after  another,  until  the  plot  is  taken  up. 
Consequently  the  open  end  of  this  trench  is 
at  no  time  covered,  or  only  slightly  covered 
if  at  all,  until  such  trench  is  filled,  when  it  is 
claimed  that  three  to  three  and  one  half  feet 
of  earth  is  thrown  over  the  whole  trench, 
the  correctness  of  which  we  were  unable  to 
ascertain,  on  account  of  the  frozen  ground. 

'^  In  our  belief  there  are  deposited  in  a 
trench  at  this  Cemetery,  such  as  was  being 
operated  upon  at  the  time  of  our  visit,  at 
least  1,500  bodies  in  a  space  of  10  feet  by 
200 ;  calculating  that  there  are  deposited 
15  bodies  in  each  tier,  which  we  understand 
to  be  a  fact.  This  method  should  be  con- 
demned at  once. 

"  We  then  visited  the  new  part  of  said 
Cemetery,  and  first  inspected  the  ground 
which  we.  understand  is  called  the  'Tem- 
porary.' There  we  found  about  ten  men 
shovelling  dirt  in  a  trench  similar  to  the  one 
above  described,  only  deeper.  The  same 
method  was  here  pursued,  with  the  excep- 
tion   that     the     trench     being      considerably 


36        Earth- Burial  and  Cremation, 

deeper,  there  could  be  more  bodies  crowded 
in  a  space  equal  to  the  size  of  the  afore  de- 
scribed. Both  of  the  above  methods  your 
Committee  considers,  and  is  convinced,  are 
exceedingly  detrimental  to  public  health  for 
the  following  reasons.  First.  The  trench  is 
kept  open  on  one  side  for  months,  allowing 
gases  to  escape  from  hundreds  of  bodies  in 
the  state  of  decomposition,  the  influence  of 
which  will  extend  for  miles  through  the 
atmosphere,  and  the  trench  is  filled  with  body 
after  body  regardless  of  the  cause  of  death,  re- 
gardless of  the  danger  to  the  living  in  the  sur- 
rounding vicinity,  mindless  of  the  still  greater 
and  more  important  danger  to  us,  the  citizens 
of  our  town,  of  polluting  the  water  in  the  im- 
mediate neighborhood  by  the  fluids  of  this 
decomposing  mass  entering  the  soil. 

"  Your  Committee  is  simply  '  surprised  '  that 
such  inhuman  methods  of  disposing  of  the 
dead  are  practiced  within  the  limits  of  a  civil- 
ized community,  and  in  such  close  proximity 
to  two  of  the  largest  cities  in  the  Union. 

''We  also  find  that  the  authorities  of  Calvary 
make  it  a  practice  to  disinter  (without  any  per- 
mit) the  bodies  of  children  whenever  an  adult 
is  to  be  buried  in  the  same  grave.  The  body 
is  disinterred  three  and  four  hours  before  the 
arrival  of  the  body,  to  be  reinterred  after  the 
interment  of  the  adult  at  the  Cemetery,  allowed 


Earth-Burial  and  Cremation.  3  7 

to  remain  lying  in  the  vicinity  of  the  grave, 
surrounded  by  the  mourners  when  they  arrive 
at  the  grave,  and  in  this  case  we  also  believe 
regardless  of  the  cause  of  death. 

*'  Considering  the  fact  that  a  great  many 
children  die  of  contagious  diseases,  such  as 
diphtheria,  scarlet-fever,  small-pox,  etc.,  and 
considering  that  their  coffins  are  often  decom- 
posed, it  is  in  our  consideration  one  of  the 
duties  of  this  Board  to  suppress  such  methods 
openly  conducted  against  all  rules  of  sanita- 
tion. 

"  Throughout  our  inspection,  your  Commit- 
tee found  a  great  many  laws  of  sanitation 
violated,  and  your  Committee  respectfully 
recommends  the  further  continuance  of  this 
Committee,  or  the  appointment  of  a  new  one, 
as  we  believe  there  are  other  violations  of  sani- 
tary rules,  which  require  close  attention  from 
your  honorable  Board. 

[Signed]  ''  Emanuel  Brandon, 

"  F.  WiCKHAM,  M.D., 

'^  Committee'' 

The  following  Report  to  the  Newtown 
Health  Board  corroborates  what  we  have 
said  regarding  repeated  interments  being 
made  in  private  graves,  and  quite  unex- 
pectedly  affords   us   an  insight   into    the 


2,8        Earth- Burial  and  Cremation, 

enormous  profits  that  result  from  this  par- 
ticular method  of  burial. 

"  Calculation  of  Profits  of  the  Cal- 
vary Cemetery  Corporation  upon  the 
Land  by  the  Acre. 

'*  Calvary's  rule,  which  is  strictly  enforced,  is 
to  make  each  grave  two  feet  wide,  and  further 
to  leave  not  one  inch  of  room  between  the 
graves  :  the  length  of  each  grave  is  about  seven 
feet. 

"  Two  hundred  feet  square  ground  is  used 
about  from  every  acre  containing  1,400  graves. 
Calvary  has  a  further  custom  of  burying  or 
allowing  six  bodies  in  a  grave  ;  consequently 
when  an  acre  is  completely  filled,  it  contains 
8,400  bodies  of  decomposing  humanity. 

''The  charge  of  Calvary  for  these  first  1,400 
interments    is    of    our    opinion    $22    each,    or 

total $30,800 

Opening  these  1,400  graves  five  times 

at  $7  each  time        ....       49,000 

Total $79,800 

Cost  per  acre  about  $2,000  ;  cost  for 
labor  opening  graves,  etc.,  at  75  cts. 
per  grave :  a  man  can  open  two 
graves  a  day — 8,400  openings  at 
75  cts.  =  $6,300.     Total  cost  .       $8,300 


Earth-Burial  and  Cremation.  '      39 

Profit  on  each  acre  when  completely 

filled $71,500 

or  a  profit  of  1,000  per  cent. 

"  We  are  not  taking  into  consideration  the 

private  small  *  flats  '  for  which  the  Corporation 

obtain  fabulous  prices." 

This  record  would  warrant  a  citizen  of 
Newtown  who  owns  unproductive  real 
estate,  in  declaring  that  law  to  be  a  parody 
on  justice  which  taxes  his  land  when  it 
produces  no  income,  and  authorizes  it  to 
be  seized  and  sold  for  arrears  of  taxes, 
while  the  land  of  a  cemetery  remains  ex- 
empt from  taxation  though  yielding  a  net 
profit  of  a  thousand  per  cent.  In  sucb 
legislation  is  fulfilled  the  scripture  w^hich 
says,  "  That  unto  every  one  which  hath 
shall  be  given ;  and  from  him  that  hath 
not,  even  that  he  hath  shall  be  taken  away 
from  him."  It  seems  to  us  morally  certain 
that  the  Legislative  Act  of  April  27, 
1847,  for  the  Incorporation  of  Rural  Cem- 
etery Associations,  has  been  made  to  serve 
a  purpose  that  its  framers  little  dreamt 
of. 

These  two   Reports   to  which  we  have 


40        Earth- Burial  and  Cremation, 

devoted  especial  attention  are  official  pa- 
pers, and  are  reproduced  verbatim.  They 
were  presented,  with  other  documents  re- 
lating to  the  cemeteries,  to  the  State 
Legislature  during  the  sessions  of  1888, 
1889,  and  1890,  and  were  submitted  for 
consideration  to  the  Senate  Committee  on 
Public  Health,  and  the  Assembly  Commit- 
tee on  Internal  Affairs.  As  late  as  Decem- 
ber 23,  1891,  one  who  recently  was  a 
member  of  the  Health  Board  of  Newtown 
positively  assured  us  that  the  charges  con- 
tained in  the  Reports  had  never  been  re- 
futed. 

Against  the  intolerable  evils  that  we 
have  mentioned  the  authorities  of  New- 
town have  for  years  contended  in  vain. 
They  see  their  property  injured,  health 
threatened,  and  hundreds  of  acres  stricken 
from  the  tax-roll  and  dedicated  to  the 
occupancy  of  the  stranger  dead.  The 
cemetery  associations  purchase  additional 
land,  the  supervisors  of  Newtown  refuse 
them  permission  to  bury  therein,  and  ulti- 
mately special  legislation  at  All) any  grants 
that    authority    which    the    local    officials, 


Earth- Burial  and  Cremation.         41 

supported  by  unanimous  public  opinion, 
liave  withheld.  Such  proceedings,  by  their 
injustice,  may  well  arouse  indignation,  for 
the  inalienable  right  of  self-protection  be- 
longs to  a  community  as  well  as  to  an 
individual ;  and  the  duty  of  the  Legisla- 
ture toward  this  prerogative  is  not  to 
destroy  it,  but  to  defend.  In  the  case  of 
NewtowD  this  right  has  been  disregarded, 
and  the  seeds  which  injustice  has  sown, 
threaten  to  blight  the  town's  future,  and 
to  produce  a  harvest  of  ills.  It  makes  a 
great  difference  in  this  world  whose  ox 
happens  to  be  gored.  "  God  and  the  Czar 
live  a  long  way  off,"  says  the  Russian  vil- 
lager when  he  suffers  wrongs  and  can  find 
no  redress ;  and  it  is  hardly  necessary  to 
add  in  this  connection  that  the  leo:islators 
who  are  indifferent  to  the  appeals  of  New- 
town for  protection  do  not  reside  in  the 
place. 

The  following  letter  from  Mr.  Enianuel 
Brandon,  a  member  of  the  Newtown  Board 
of  Health,  to  Mr.  John  Townshend,  Presi- 
dent of  the  U.  S.  Cremation  Co.,  whose 
crematory  is  at  Fresh  Pond,  L.  I.,  briefly 


42        Earth- Bm^ial  and  Cremation. 

and  forcibly  confirms  the  existence  of  the 
evils  that  we  have  described.* 

"WiNFiELD  Junction,  N.  Y., 
March  1st,  1889. 

"  Sir  :— 

'*  Surrounded  as  I  am  in  my  township  by 
1,250,000  bodies  of  slowly  decomposing  hu- 
manity ;  knowing  as  I  do  the  bad  results  sani- 
tarily, with  the  fact  that  our  little  township 
(  Newtown )  has  almost  the  highest  death-rate 
in  the  State,  and  also  having  opportunity  to 
observe  the  method  by  which  your  company 
proposes  to  solve  this  '  very  important  ques- 
tion,' the  disposal  of  the  bodies  of  the  de- 
parted ;  for  all  these  reasons  I  say  that 
cremating  the  bodies  of  our  dead  ones  is  the 
only  humane  method  of  disposing  of  the  same. 
"  I  remain.  Sir,  yours  respectfully, 

"  Emanuel  Brandon." 

Recalling  the  emphatic  assertion  of  Sir 
Henry  Thompson,  Professor  of  Clinical  Sur- 
gery in  University  College,  London,  that 
"  no  dead  body  is  ever  placed  in  the  soil 
without  polluting  the  earth,  the  air,  and 

*  Mr.  Brandon  is  the  present  coroner  of  Newtown,  and 
to  his  kindness,  which  far  exceeded  the  ordinary  require- 
ments of  courtesy,  we  are  indebted  for  many  important 
facts  relating  to  the  cemeteries  in  his  township. 


Earth-Burial  and  Cremation.         43 

the  water  abov^e  and  about  it,"  is  it  at  all 
surprising,  we  may  ask,  that,  with  twelve 
hundred  and  fifty  thousand  bodies  buried 
within  the  township,  Newtown  should 
have  "  almost  the  highest  death-rate  in  the 
State  "  ?  Other  parts  of  Long  Island,  with 
no  better  natural  advantages  than  this,  are 
justly  regarded  as  having  a  beneficial  effect 
upon  health,  and  these  same  favorable 
conditions  would  without  doubt  be  enjoyed 
by  I^ewtown  if  the  pernicious  infiuence  of 
the  cemeteries  did  not  render  it  impossible 
for  them  to  exist. 

We  need  not  offer  any  apology  for 
devoting  so  much  space  to  the  considera- 
tion of  these  cemeteries,  for  a  competent 
acquaintance  with  the  facts  relating  to 
their  condition  gives  to  the  arguments  that 
we  now  present  a  peculiar  and  significant 
force.  The  total  number  of  deaths  for 
New  York  and  Brooklyn  amounts,  as  we 
have  seen,  to  sixty  thousand  per  year ;  and 
allowing  ten  years  for  the  complete  decom- 
position of  the  body  ''^ — a  process  intention- 

*  ' '  The  estimates  which  have  been  made  of  the  time 
required  for  the  complete  destruction  of  a  body  vary 
between  forty  and  three  years." — Dr.  R.   S.  Tracy  in 


44        Earth-Burial  and  Cremation, 

ally  but  wrongfully  delayed  by  our  present 
system  of  using  double  coffins, — we  have 
in  tbe  Long  Island  cemeteries,  constantly, 
some  six  hundred  thousand  human  bodies 
in  various  stages  of  putrefactive  decay, 
polluting  the  subterranean  springs  to  an 
alarming  extent,  and  giving  off  noxious 
gases  and  disease  germs  to  the  atmos- 
phere. The  increasing  prevalence  of  ty- 
phoid fever  in  Brooklyn  is  regarded  by 
the  Sanitarian  for  January,  1889,  as 
''  probably  due  for  the  most  part  to  sewage 
pollution  of  the  intensest  and  most  loath- 
some kind,  the  seepage  of  graveyards.  The 
subsoil  water  of  Long  Island,  from  which 
the  Brooklyn  supply  is  taken,  is  well 
known  to  be  a  moving  volume  from  the 
^backbone'  of  the  island  toward  the  sea- 
shore."    This  process  of  filtration  through 

Ziemssen's  Cyclopcedia  of  the  Practice  of  Medicins,  vol. 
xix.,  p.  460.  Between  twelve  and  thirty  years  would 
seem  to  be  the  average  length  of  time  necessary,  accord- 
ing to  the  general  opinion  of  those  who  have  had  favora- 
ble opportmiities  for  judging.  Each  case  is  affected  by  the 
peculiar  circumstances  attending  it.  The  disease  that  oc- 
casioned death  :  the  manner  in  which  the  body  is  coffined ; 
the  nature  of  the  soil  in  which  it  is  placed ;  these,  and 
other  conditions,  hasten  or  retard  decomposition. 


Earth- Burial  and  Cremation.         45 

the  sand  would  insure  the  purity  of  the 
water  were  it  not  for  the  numerous  ceme- 
teries and  graveyards,  some  of  them  in 
dangerous  proximity  to  the  reservoirs. 
"  Moreover,"  adds  the  Sanitarian^  "  dan- 
gerous proximity,  in  this  case,  consists  in 
the  fact  that  the  dead  are  placed  at  a  depth 
conveniently  exposed  to  the  subsoil  water 
current,  carefully  protected  from  contact 
with  the  earth  by  the  coffins  until  long  after 
the  access  of  water  to  them  ;  that  cases  are 
on  record  in  which  typhoid  fever  has  been 
traced  to  the  seepage  of  sewage  through 
soil  more  than  a  mile  in  extent ;  the  spe- 
cially favorable  nature  of  the  soil  and 
course  of  the  subsoil  current ;  and  that  there 
are  several  graveyards  within  a  quarter  of  a 
mile  of  the  reservoirs.  Surely  such  condi- 
tions are  alike  dangerous  and  revolting." 

Dr.  John  T.  Nagle,  Deputy  Registrar  of 
Vital  Statistics  in  New  York  City,  sounded 
a  note  of  warning  on  this  subject  eight  years 
ago,  when  he  declared  in  an  interview 
{Mail  and  Express,  July  19,  1884)  that 
^'the  local  Health  Boards  of  Brooklyn 
ought  to  look  into  the  condition  of  their 


46         Earth- Burial  a7id  Cremation. 

several  cemeteries  at  once.  Such  a  mass 
of  decaying  humanity."  said  he,  "  if  not 
properly  buried,  is  very  apt  to  cause  at  no 
distant  day  an  epidemic  of  a  most  serious 
character,  which  if  once  started  would 
sweep  our  seaboard."  The  great  Eidge- 
wood  Keservoir  of  Brooklyn,  containing  one 
hundred  and  sixty-seven  million  gallons  of 
water,  is  bounded  by  Macpelah  and  Cypress 
Hill  cemeteries  on  the  north,  and  by  the 
Cemetery  of  the  Evergreens  on  the  south- 
west. In  these  cemeteries  have  been  buried 
about  two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 
bodies.  AVe  would  not  have  the  reader 
infer,  even  by  implication,  that  the  water 
of  this  reservoir  is  contaminated  by  the 
cemeteries :  for  we  have  no  evidence  to 
warrant  such  belief.  But  is  it  safe  that  a 
reservoir  should  receive  any  portion  of  its 
supply  from  springs  that  flow  through  a 
section  of  country  covered  with  ceme- 
teries ? 

"  Contamination  of  well  water,"  writes 
Dr.  E.  G.  Banney,  Secretary  of  the  Michi- 
gan State  Medical  Society,  "  has  been 
directlv  traced  to  cemeteries  situate  more 


Earth' Burial  and  Cremation.         a^'j 

than  half  a  mile  distant."  The  terrible 
epidemic  of  typhoid  fever  which  scourged 
Plymouth,  Pa.,  seven  years  ago,  resulted 
from  the  intestinal  discharges  of  one  fever 
patient  gaining  access  to  the  drinking-water 
of  the  town,  as  the  reports  of  the  several 
committees  of  investigation  show.  Out  of 
a  population  of  eight  thousand  persons, 
twelve  hundred  were  stricken  down,  and 
one  hundred  and  thirty  died  in  the  course 
of  a  few  weeks.  Referring  to  this  epi- 
demic, Dr.  J.  Edgar  Chancellor,  in  an 
address  before  the  Medical  Society  of  Vir- 
ginia, at  its  annual  meeting  in  1885,  said : 
"  If  the  excreta  of  one  typhoid  fever  case 
thrown  upon  the  snow  can  infect  the  wells 
or  reservoirs  of  a  city  to  this  extent,  what 
may  we  not  expect  from  the  decomposition 
of  human  bodies  in  the  long-used  burial- 
grounds  and  cemeteries  of  many  towns  and 
cities  ?  Gentlemen,"  adds  the  physician, 
"this  is  no  word-painting,  as  you  know, 
but  solid,  incontrovertible,  alarming  facts, 
to  which  I  beg  your  calm,  patient  considera- 
tion."  Commenting  on  this  same  case,  the 
late  Dr.  William  H.  Coggeshall  of  Rich- 


48         Earth-Burial  and  Cremation. 

mond,  Va.,  in  a  valuable  report  on  "Ad- 
vances in  Hygiene  and  Public  Health," 
said  that  '-Whatever  doubt  could  pre- 
viously exist  in  the  mind  of  any  member 
of  the  profession  regarding  the  power  of 
previously  pure  running  water  to  become 
an  active  carrier  of  typhoid  infective  germs, 
has  by  this  epidemic  been  entirely  dissi- 
pated." And,  moreover,  he  adds  :  "  The 
water  supply  of  a  town  or  city,  notwith- 
standing the  safeguards  commonly  thrown 
around  it  by  the  municipality,  can  easily 
be  transformed,  suddenly  and  unexpectedly 
by  contamination,  into  a  poisonous  condi- 
tion for  the  uses  of  a  community,  from  a 
source  at  once  remote  and  individual^ 

Philadelphia,  it  has  been  stated,  has  a 
greater  mortality  from  typhoid  fever  than 
any  other  city  in  the  country,  and  the  vital 
statistics  show  that  about  a  thousand  per- 
sons die  there  from  this  disease  every  year. 
During  the  first  three  months  of  this  year 
(1891),  910  cases  were  reported,  of  which 
196  terminated  fatally.  The  Delaware  and 
Schuylkill  rivers  are  both  polluted  by  sew- 
age, and  seven  large  cemeteries  are  drained 


Earth-Burial  and  Cremation.        49 

into  the  Fairmount  Reservoir,  which  is  the 
proximate  source  of  the  city  water  supply. 
When  ex-Chief  Engineer  Ludlow  plainly 
told  the  people  of  Philadelphia  that  their 
water  was  unfit  for  drinking,  he  was 
lauo^hed  at,  and  the  bold  assertion  cost  him 
his  official  head.  Yet  Dr.  Franklin  G-auntt 
of  Burlington,  N.  J.,  an  expert  on  this  sub- 
ject, after  giving  much  attention  to  the 
relation  existing  between  the  city  water 
and  typhoid,  declared  to  a  reporter  of  the 
Philadelphia  Press,  that  the  Schuylkill 
River,  that  winds  through  the  beautiful 
Fairmount  Park,  was  positively  polluted 
by  the  soakage  and  drainage  from  the 
cemeteries  along  the  bank.  We  know  that 
about  85  per  cent,  of  the  human  body  is 
water.  ^' These  little  drops  of  water, 
squeezed  by  ^  Father  Time  '  from  the  dead, 
are  loaded  with  sure  death  for  the  living 
who  drink  of  it.  In  fact,"  says  this  physi- 
cian, "  I  have  heard  professional  men  in 
Philadelphia  say,  that  when  you  drink 
Schuylkill  water  you  are  sampling  your 
grandfather.  It  is  commonly  stated  that 
in   certain    analyses    made    of    this    water 


50         EartJi-Burial  afid  Cremation. 

traces  of  tlie  oil  of  cedar  have  been  found, 
and  it  came  from  tlie  coffins  and  cedar 
cases  of  those  buried  in  Laurel  Hill  Ceme- 
tery." He  adds  :  '^  There  is  another  source 
of  danger  that  has  been  overlooked.  It  is 
the  Schuylkill  River  ice.  Much  of  that  is 
used  in  Philadelphia.  People  have  an 
idea  that  the  process  of  freezing  would  kill 
the  germ  (of  typhoid),  but  it  cannot.  It 
is  important  that  every  drop  of  drinking- 
water  should  be  boiled  at  least  fifteen 
minutes,  and  after  the  water  is  boiled  it 
must  not  be  polluted  by  the  use  of  Schuyl- 
kill ice.  •  No  water  taken  from  the  hydrants 
of  Philadelphia  is  fit  to  drink.  Hundreds 
of  physicians  know  this,  and  insist  on 
having  all  their  drinking-water  carefully 
boiled.  I  have  taken  notice  that  in  many 
hospitals  this  precaution  is  taken."  In 
conclusion,  he  says :  "  During  the  last 
twenty-five  years  upwards  of  twenty -five 
thousand  people  have  been  killed  off,  and 
two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  prostrated 
with  a  lingering  illness  that  is  preventable." 
We  should  remember  in  this  connection 
that  contamination  of  the  atmosphere  by 


Earth- Burial  and  Cremation.        51 

typhoid-fever  poison  is  impossible.  A  pa- 
tient in  a  hospital  has  never  been  known 
to  catch  this  fever  from  another  ill  with 
the  disease.  The  contagion  is  seldom 
spread  except  by  polluted  water,  ice,  milk, 
or  meat,  bad  water  being  the  commonest 
cause ;  and  because  of  these  facts  Dr.  Cy- 
rus Edson,  in  speaking  on  the  subject  before 
the  JSTew  York  Academy  of  Medicine  two 
years  and  a  half  ago,  declared  that  the  prev- 
alence of  the  disease  was  simply  a  disgrace 
to  the  century.*  All  physicians  recognize 
the  importance  of  these  and  kindred  facts. 
"That  the  dead  do  kill  the  living,"  says 
Dr.  W.  H.  Curtis,  "is  only  too  true;  and 
that  cholera,  yellow-fever,  and  the  whole 
list  of  zymotic  and  infectious  diseases  are 
capable  of  being  transmitted  through  the 
contamination  of  water  and  air  supplies  is 
no  more  difficult  of  demonstration  than  it  is 
to  prove  the  ability  of  sewer  gas  or  sewer 
water  to  propagate  disease." 

In  this  emphatic  declaration  Dr.  Curtis 
is  supported  by  that  ardent  cremationist, 

*  In  1891,  there  were  1,329  cases  of  typhoid  fever  in  New 
York  City,  of  which  384  resulted  fatally. 


52         Earth- Burial  and  Cremation, 

Sir  T.  Spencer  Wells,  late  President  of  the 
Eoyal  College  of  Surgeons  of  England  and 
surgeon  to  the  Queen's  household.  "  De- 
composing human  remains,"  writes  this 
gentleman,  "  so  pollute  the  earth,  air,  and 
water  as  to  diminish  the  general  health 
and  the  average  duration  of  the  life  of  our 
people";  and  "  existing  cemeteries,"  he  adds, 
"are  not  well  fitted  as  safe,  secure,  perma- 
nent, innocuous  places  of  repose  for  the 
remains  of  the  dead." 

The  total  number  of  deaths  for  the  year 
1891,  in  New  York  City,  was  43,634 ;  of 
these,  7,760,  or  about  l7-j^8_  per  cent.,  re- 
sulted from  zymotic  diseases,  a  class  which 
includes  typhoid  fever,  small-pox,  whoop- 
ing-cough, typhus  fever,  malarial  fever, 
diphtheria,  measles,  scarlet-fever,  cholera, 
and  diarrhoeal  diseases.*  In  referring  to  the 
fact  that  in  1884,  84,196  persons  died  in 

*  There  is  a  difference  of  opinion  among  the  medical  au- 
thorities as  to  whether  or  not  malarial  fevers  and  diarrhoeal 
complaints  come  properly  under  the  head  of  zymotic  diseases. 
We  have  included  them  among  these  maladies  in  making  the 
above  calculation,  and  that  is  the  course  followed  by  Sir  Henry 
Thompson  in  giving  the  number  of  deaths  caused  by  these 
diseases  in  England  and  Wales.  By  eliminating  malarial  fevers 
and  diarrhoeal  complaints  from  the  list,  the  number  of  deaths 
due  to  zymotic  diseases  in  New  York  City  in  1891  would  be 
3,988,  or  9y^V  P^^  cent,  of  the  total  number  of  deaths. 


Earth- Burial  and  Cremation.         53 

England  and  Wales  from  zymotic  diseases 
alone, — a  number  representing  about  16 
per  cent,  of  all  the  deaths, — Sir  Henry 
Thompson  wrote :  "It  is  vain  to  dream  of 
wiping  out  the  reproach  to  our  civilization, 
which  the  presence  and  power  of  these 
diseases  in  our  midst  assuredly  constitute, 
by  any  precaution  or  treatment,  while  ef- 
fective machinery  for  their  reproduction  is 
in  constant  daily  action.  .  .  .  The  pro- 
portion of  deaths  due  to  the  diseases  re- 
ferred to  is  exceedingly  large.  And  let  it 
never  be  forgotten  that  they  form  no  neces- 
sary part  of  any  heritage  appertaining  to 
the  human  family.  All  are  preventable, 
all  certainly  destined  to  disappear  at  some 
future  day,  when  man  has  thoroughly  made 
up  his  mind  to  deal  with  them  seriously. 
.  .  .  And  one  of  the  first  steps,  an  ab- 
solutely essential  step  for  the  attainment 
of  the  inestimable  result  I  have  proposed, 
is  the  cremation  of  each  body  the  life  of 
which  has  been  destroyed  by  one  of  these 
contagious  maladies.  I  know  no  other 
means  by  which  it  can  be  ensured."  * 

*  Modern    Cremation  :    Its  History  and  Practice.      By  Sir 
H.  Thompson,  pp.  113,  114. 


54         Earth-Burial  and  Cremation. 

In  1885,  as  a  result  of  protests  extending 
over  several  years,  by  many  residents  of 
!N"yack,  New  York,  against  the  encroach- 
ment of  the  Oak  Hill  Cemetery  upon  the 
village,  the  State  Board  of  Health  ordered 
an  inquiry  to  be  made,  and  the  report  of 
its  Secretary,  Dr.  Alfred  C.  Carroll,  de- 
clared that  the  cemetery  was  polluting  the 
water  of  the  ponds  and  wells  of  the  village, 
and  its  further  extension  was  "to  be  de- 
plored on  sanitary  grounds."  In  this  cem- 
etery there  are  over  four  thousand  bodies 
buried  in  a  space  of  eighteen  acres,  and 
water  taken  from  the  neighboring  wells 
and  examined  by  Dr.  William  Hailes,  Jr., 
showed,  to  use  his  own  words,  "  a  marked 
degree  of  bacterial  infection " ;  he  pro- 
nounced it  "  unsafe  for  drinking  purposes." 
Accompanying  the  reports  of  these  physi- 
cians was  that  of  Civil  Engineer  Horace 
Andrews,  who  writes  :  "  At  the  present  day 
there  is,  on  the  part  of  sanitary  authori- 
ties, no  doubt  regarding  the  injurious  effect 
of  cemeteries  upon  the  public  health.  The 
pollution  of  water  is  a  great  and  manifest 
evil.     In  the   case  of   Oak  Hill  Cemetery 


Earth-Burial  and  Cremation.         55 

there  is  good  reason  to  believe  that  the 
water  in  various  wells  in  its  vicinity  has 
been  brought  into  contact  with  the  bodies 
of  the  dead,  and  holds  organic  impurities 
in  solution.  ...  A  large  part  of  the 
cemetery  drainage  must  find  its  way  into 
the  neighboring  ice-pond.  The  use  of  ice 
from  the  pond  should  certainly  be  confined 
to  the  refrigerating  operations  of  brewers, 
or  to  other  uses  where  it  may  be  kept  from 
actual  consumption  by  human  beings.  .  .  . 
Under  ordinary  circumstances  water  con- 
taminated with  decaying  substances  will 
merely  have  the  effect  of  lowering  the  vi- 
tal powers  and  of  increasing  susceptibility 
to  disease.  But  water  contaminated  with 
drainage  from  the  bodies  of  the  dead  may 
be  loaded  with  specific  poison  and  with 
the  germs  of  disease.  Instances  are  re- 
corded where  the  use  of  such  water  has 
occasioned  frightful  epidemics." 

In  the  action  of  the  Township  of  l^orth 
Bergen  J  IN".  J.,  against  the  Weehawken 
Cemetery  Association,  in  1886,  for  the 
purpose  of  closing  the  cemetery  on  sani- 
tary grounds  and  preventing  further  buri- 


56         Ea7'th-Burial  and  Creutation. 

als  therein,  several  physicians  testified  to 
the  fact  that  diphtheria  and  other  infec- 
tious diseases  were  epidemic  in  the  place, 
and  that  they  were  mainly  due  to  the  un- 
hygienic state  oi  the  cemetery,  which  lies 
in  the  most  densely  populated  part  of  the 
township.  One  of  the  physicians  was  of 
the  opinion  that  the  numerous  cases  of 
diphtheria  that  had  appeared  among  the 
schoc)!  children,  were  occasioned  by  drink- 
ing water  from  a  well  in  the  neighborhood 
of  the  cemetery. 

Again,  in  the  summer  of  1877,  when, 
portions  of  the  town  of  Hornellsville,  N.  Y., 
were  scourged  with  diphtheria,  the  disease 
was  most  virulent  and  fatal  in  those  dis- 
tricts whose  wells  were  supplied  by  natural 
water-courses  fiou'ing  fi'om  Mount  Hope, 
where  the  village  cemeteiy  is  located. 

In  188 7.  when  the  town  of  Watkins, 
y.  Y..  suffered  from  diphtheria  to  such  an 
extent  that  the  people  were  almost  panic- 
stricken,  and  whole  families  of  children 
were  swept  away,  it  is  said  that  the  disease 
committed  its  ravages  only  in  those  por- 
tions where  the  drinking-water  was  supplied 


Earth-Burial  and  Cremation,         5  7 

from  courses  having  their  rise  on  the  hill 
west  of  the  town.  On  this  hill  is  ''  Lake 
View,"  the  village  cemetery.  Thus,  in  both 
of  the  above  towns,  those  who  lived  awaj 
from  these  natural  water-courses  on  higher 
ground,  or  at  more  remote  distances, 
escaped  the  fury  of  the  scourge.  During 
the  alarming  prevalence  of  typhoid  fever 
in  Carmansville,  N.  Y.,  in  March,  1883,  it 
was  shown  that  all  the  cases  of  fever  de- 
veloped ^'  on  three  sides  of,  and  close  to, 
Trinity  Cemetery,"  and  that  there  was  no- 
other  discoverable  source  or  cause  of  the 
epidemic.  In  1884,  an  eminent  physician, 
of  Denmark,  having  made  a  study  of  the 
cemeteries  of  that  country,  claimed  to  have 
demonstrated  that  ten  towns  have  often 
suffered  with  infectious  diseases  propagated 
from  burial-grounds ;  and  in  the  rural  dis- 
tricts he  says  he  has  traced  seventy-eight 
epidemics,  mostly  of  typhoid  fever,  to  the 
same  cause. 

These  facts  give  force  to  the  words  of 
the  late  Mr.  Eassie,  a  well  known  Ensrlish 
sanitarian,  who  said  that  "the  question, 
what  to  do  with  the  dead,  transcends  every 


^S         Earth-Burial  a7id  Cr equation, 

otlier  sanitary  problem  in  its  importance  to 
tlie  livinsf." 

It  is  an  error,  only  too  prevalent,  to  ex- 
pect that  water  to  be  unwholesome  should 
possess  a  disagreeable  taste.  It  is  no  more 
essential  than  that  an  offensive  smell  is 
necessary  to  render  a  neighborhood  unfit 
to  live  in.  Both  of  these  fallacies  prevail 
widely  ;  and,  as  regards  water,  we  doubt  if 
there  is  a  rural  cemetery  in  this  country 
that  has  not  a  well  somewhere  among  its 
graves,  receiving  abundant  patronage  if  it 
lias  no  offensive  taste.  The  danger  to  be 
apprehended  from  this  source,  or  from  any 
streams  in  the  vicinity  of  burial-grounds, 
is  thus  forcibly  pointed  out  by  the  London 
Lancet : 

"  It  is  a  well-ascertained  fact  that  the  surest 
carrier  and  most  fruitful  nidus  of  zymotic  con- 
tagion is  this  brilliant,  enticing-looking  water, 
charged  with  the  nitrates  which  result  from 
organic  decomposition.  What,  for  example, 
was  the  history  of  the  Broad  street  pump, 
which  proved  so  fatal  during  the  cholera  epi- 
demic of  1854?  Was  its  water  foul,  thick,  and 
stinking.''  Unfortunately  not.  It  was  the 
purest-looking  and  most  enticing  water  to  be 


Earth- Burial  and  Cremation.        59 

found  in  the  neighborhood,  and  people  came 
from  a  distance  to  get  it.  Yet  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  it  carried  cholera  to  many  who 
drank  it.  .  .  .  We  are  afraid  Mr.  Hadden 
will  have  to  confess  that  at  present  the  only 
known  method  of  making  organic  matter  cer- 
tainly harmless  is  the  process  of  cremation." 

As  to  Irisli  churcliyards,  Dr.  Mapother, 
who  inspected  several,  declared  tliat  he 
^^  generally  found,  them  placed  on  the  high- 
est spot,  near  the  most  central  part,  whence, 
of  course,  all  percolations  descend  into  the 
wells." 

In  1877,  a  malignant  epidemic  broke 
out  in  a  section  of  Elsinore,  Denmark,  that 
baffled  the  skill  of  the  leading  physicians 
in  their  efforts  to  subdue  it.  On  the 
drinking-water  in  the  affected  quarter 
being  analyzed,  it  was  found  poisoned  by 
the  corruption  that  had  drained  into  the 
wells  from  an  adjoining  cemetery.  Pro- 
fessor Brande  has  given  it  as  his  opinion 
that  the  water  in  all  superficial  springs  near 
burial-grounds  is  simply  filtered  through 
accumulated  decomposition.  Realizing  the 
gravity  of  this  subject,  the  distinguished 


6o        Earth-Burial  a7id  Cremation. 

scientist  aud  pbysiciati,  Sir  Henry  Thomp- 
son, eighteen  years  ago,  wrote,  in  no 
uncertain  terms,  strong  words  of  warning. 
In  an  article  in  the  Contemporavy  Re- 
^^^^'2^  for  January,  1874,  urgently  advocating 
the  substitution  of  cremation  for  earth- 
burial,  he  declared  that  by  selecting  a  por- 
tion of  ground  distant  some  five  or  ten 
miles  from  any  very  j)opulous  neighbor- 
hood, and  bv  sendins:  our  dead  to  be  buried 
there,  we  were  '^  laying  by  poison,  it  is 
certain,  for  our  children's  children,  who 
will  find  our  remains  polluting  their  water- 
sources  when  that  now  distant  plot  is 
covered,  as  it  will  be  more  or  less  closely, 
by  human  dwellings.  We  cannot  too  soon 
cease  to  do  evil  and  learn  to  do  well.  Is 
it  not,  indeed,  a  social  sin  of  no  small  mag- 
nitude to  sow  the  seeds  of  disease  and 
death  broadcast,  caring  only  to  be  certain 
that  they  cannot  do  much  harm  to  our  own 
generation  ? " 

This  feeling  is  shared  by  other  dis- 
tino^uished  Eno-lish  writers;  and  the 
London  Lancet  of  January  11,  1879, 
speaking     of    the    necessity    of    devising 


Earth- Burial  and  Cremation,         6i 

special  measures  for  the  disposal    of   the 
dead,  said : 

"  The  expedient  of  burial  in  suburban  cem- 
eteries is  only  temporary.  It  may  last  our 
time,  but  the  next  generation  will  be  called 
upon  to  solve  the  sanitary  problem  in  a  more 
permanent  way." 

In  the  light  of  the  above  facts  it  is  not 
reassuring  for  the  people  of  New  York 
to  read  the  report  of  expert  engineer 
Charles  C.  Brown,  a  professor  of  Union 
College,  who,  in  his  communication  to  the 
State  Board  of  Health,  of  January  26, 
1889,  states  that  eighty-three  cemeteries, 
providing  for  the  dead  of  about  twenty 
thousand  people,  are  located  in  and  contrib- 
uting to  the  pollution  of  the  Croton  water- 
shed. 

Truly  said  the  Philadelphia  Bulletin  in 
an  article  favoring  cremation,  in  1886  : 

*'  The  dead  everywhere  are  in  the  way  of  the 
living.  As  they  lie  in  their  graves  they  are 
powerless  for  good,  but  they  are  strong  for 
evil.  The  decaying  of  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  victims  of  disease  pollutes  the  air  we  breathe, 
and  poisons  the  water  we  drink.     The  germs 


62  E:.r:':-B:i--::\  :.-:J  Cr ■:/}::.! ion. 

of  diseases,  such  as  typhoid,  small-pox,  diph- 
ther'a.  scarlet-fev^er,  yellow-fev^er,  and  other 
maladies    v,  hich    often    become    epidemic,    are 

reprriucrd  in  the  corpses  of  their  buried 
victin:s.  and  are  sen:  ::r:n  ::  attack  the  '-v:'v:.g 
and  start  ne.v  enidentics.  Burial  of  the  dead 
in  or  near  cities  is  thus  an  evil  that  grows  at  an 
ever  increasing  rate  of  progression.  This  is  a 
fact  recognizee  oy  men  who  have  studied  sani- 
tary- science  closely,  and  by  many  Boards  of 
Heaithd" 

Oiu'  cemeteiies.  indeed,  exemplify  tlie 
law  iji  naiiiic  tliat  causes  trees  to  produce 
fi"'uit  after  theii"'  kind.  They  are  really 
vast  store-liL'Uses  and  niirserit-s  ui  disease, 
and  as  th^  niagnet  attracts  the  ore.  s-:'  they, 
like  L:'a'l-:';-n-s.  draw  the  living  to  trirrrnal 
compaLi'jn-hip  with  the  dead  : 

'■'  An  An^elo  for  Claudio.  death  for  death." 


CHAPTEE  III. 

The  Transitory  Nature  of  Cemeteries,  and  their  Ultimate 
Fate. — Plagues  Occasioned  by  Disinterments. — The 
Overcrowded  Condition  of  Cemeteries. — Diseases  Ee- 
sulting  from  their  Local  Influence. — ^The  Investiga- 
tions of  M.  Pasteur  and  Dr.  Domingo  Freire. — 
Bacteria  Working  from  the  Buried  Bodies  to  the 
Surface. — Splenic-Fever  and  Yellow-Fever  Directly 
Traced  to  tliis  Cause. — The  "Warning  of  Dr.  Freire. — 
Emphatic  Condemnation  of  Cemeteries  by  a  Commit- 
tee of  the  American  Medical  Association. 

The  history  of  graveyards  in  every  coun- 
try presents  a  remarkable  uniformity,  and 
their  fate  seems  ever  the  same.  Under 
whatever  auspices  they  are  established 
they  become  in  time  terribly  overcrowded 
and  ultimately  they  are  closed  and  turned 
into  parks,  or  the  grounds  are  sold,  the 
remains  dug  up  and  carted  away,  and  rows 
of  buildings  erected  upon  the  site. 

In  our  own  country  few  are  the  head- 
stones found  that  have  stood  one  hundred 

63 


64        Earth- Burial  and  Crefnation. 

years.  Prior  to  the  establishment  of  sub- 
urban cemeteries  some  iifty  years  ago, 
tens  of  thousands  of  the  dead  ^vere  buried 
on  Manhattan  Island.  Their  remains,  with 
the  tombstones  on  which  were  quaint 
epitaphs  that  our  fathers  read,  have  been 
scattered  in  every  direction,  and  of  all, 
those  only  seem  saved  from  molestation 
who  were  buried  under  the  very  shadow 
of  Trinity  or  St.  Paul's.  In  Paris,  as  a  re- 
sult of  graves  seldom  being  held  in  per- 
petuity, the  foundations  of  roads  are 
sometimes  seen  made  of  gravestones  but 
a  few  years  old  ;  "  and  though  in  London," 
says  the  author  of  God's  Acre  Beautiful 
"  memorial  stones  erected  to  '  perpetuate  ' 
the  memory  of  persons,  are  not  cleared 
away  as  promptly,  the  result  in  the  end  is 
very  much  the  same."  "  St.  George's," 
one  of  the  London  cemeteries  that  recently 
ceased  to  exist,  contained,  early  in  1891, 
a  handsome  monument  with  an  inscrip- 
tion worthy  of  being  preserved.  The 
monument  was  erected  on  or  about  the 
year  1812  to  the  memory  of  the  Hon. 
^Noretta   Pratt,  a  connection   of   tlie  fam- 


Earth- Burial  and  Cremation.        65 

ily  of  the  Earl  of  Camden,  and  though 
time  had  effaced  portions  of  the  inscrip- 
tion, yet  the  following  lines  were  not 
obscured  : 

"  This  worthy  woman  beHeving  that  the 
vapours  arising  from  the  graves  in  the  Church 
Yards  of  populous  Cities  will  prove  hurtful  to 
the  inhabitants,  and  resolving  to  extend  to 
future  times  as  far  as  she  was  able  that  charity 
and  benevolence  which  distinguished  her 
through  life,  ordered  that  her  body  should 
be  burnt  in  hopes  that  others  would  follow  the 
example,  a  thing  too  hastily  censured  by  those 
who  did  not  enquire  the  motive." 

Her  wishes,  however,  were  disregarded ; 
she  was  buried  in  the  conventional  way, 
-and  her  tomb  decorated  with  -  an  empty 
urn.  But  time  has  justified  her  opinion, 
Bnd  for  years  interments  have  been  discon- 
tinued in  this  burial-ground :  since  the 
summer  of  1891  all  its  monuments  and 
gravestones  have  been  removed. 

Before  consoling  ourselves  with  the 
thought  that  in  our  own  country  ceme- 
teries are  peculiarly  sacred  and  are  seldom 
if  ever  disturbed,   let   us   recall   the   fate 


66         Earth-Burial  and  CreTuation, 

of  the  burial-grounds  of  New  York,  and 
remember  that  in  at  least  three  of  the 
graveyards  of  conservative  Boston  and  in 
one  at  least  outside  the  city,  Dr.  Oliver 
Wendell  Holmes  declares,  that  ''  the  stones 
have  been  shuffled  about  like  chessmen, 
and  nothing  short  of  the  Day  of  Judg- 
ment Avill  tell  whose  dust  lies  beneath. 
.  .  .  Epitaphs,"  he  adds,  "  were  never 
famous  for  truth,  but  the  old  reproach 
of  ^  Here  lies '  never  had  such  a  wholesale 
illustration  as  in  these  outraged  burial- 
places,  where  the  stone  does  lie  above  and 
the  bones  do  not  lie  beneath." 

Even  remote  rural  cemeteries,  from  the 
death  of  those  interested  in  them,  or  from 
the  necessity  of  opening  new  streets  or 
constructing  railways,  succumb  to  the 
march  of  improvement.  Beautiful  as  they 
sometimes  seem,  and  harmless  as  the 
advocates  of  inhumation  would  have  us 
believe  them  to  be,  the  putrid  tenants  of 
their  vaults  and  graves  contain  the  germs 
of  contagious  diseases ;  and  disintei-ment 
is  always  undertaken  at  a  terrible  I'isk. 

The  experiments  of  Prof.  Tyndall  and 


Earth- Burial  and  Cremation.         67 

others  have  shown  "  that  certain  organisms 
may  be  boiled  for  hours  and  may  be 
frozen,  and  still  survive  to  propagate  their 
species."  Grrain  entombed  with  Egyptian 
mummies  for  forty  centuries  has  been 
planted,  and  has  sprouted  into  life.  "  By 
what  authority,  then,"  asks  Dr.  Frederick 
Peterson,"^  "  can  we  affirm  that  life  departs 
from  disease-germs  by  inhumation  %  How 
dare  we  preserve  vast  depots  in  the  South 
of  yellow-fever  fomites^  coffers  of  Asiatic 
cholera,  and  every  year  accumulate  and 
treasure  up  small-pox,  scarlet-fever,  whoop- 
ing-cough, diphtheria  and  measles  ?  "  The 
sanitary  records  of  nearly  every  nation 
give  point  and  force  to  the  Doctor's  ques- 
tions and  illustrate  the  danger  of  which  he 
speaks.  In  an  address  delivered  before 
the  New  York  Academy  of  Medicine  on 
March  12,  1891,  Dr.  J.  Lewis  Smith 
mentioned  the  case  of  an  unfortunate 
grave-digger,  who,  having  disinterred  the 
remains  of  persons  who  had  died  twenty- 
three  years  before  from  diphtheria,  fell  a 

*  In  an  article  advocating  Cremation,  in  the  Buffalo 
Medical  and  Surgical  Journal  of  April,  1881. 


68         Earth-Burial  and  Cremation. 

victim  soon  after  to  the  disease  himself. 
Id  1S2S  Professor  Bianchi  demonstrated 
how  the  fearful  reappearance  of  the  plague 
at  Modena  was  caused  by  excavations  in 
ground  vrhere,  three  hundred  years  pre- 
viously, the  victims  of  the  pestilence  had 
been  buried.  Mr.  Cooper  in  explaining 
the  causes  of  some  epidemics,  remarks, 
that  the  opening  of  the  plague  burial- 
grounds  at  Eyani.  in  Derbyshire,  occasioned 
an  immediate  outbreak  of  disease.  He  also 
describes  how  the  malignity  of  the  cholera, 
which  scourged  London  in  the  year  1854, 
was  enhanced  by  the  excavations  made  for 
sewers  in  the  soil  A^'here  in  1665  those 
dying  from  the  plague  were  buried.  Sir 
John  Simon  had  predicated  this  result,  and 
warned  the  authorities  of  the  danger  of 
disturbing  the  spot.  Sir  Lyon  Playfair 
regards  the  Roman  fever  as  resulting  from 
the  exhalations  of  soil  saturated  with 
organic  remains.  Mr.  Eassie  in  his  splendid 
work  on  The  Cremation  of  the  Dead 
tells  us  that  in  1843,  when  the  parish 
church  in  Minchinhampton  was  rebuilding, 
the  soil  of  the  burial-ground,  or  what  was 


Earth-Burial  and  Cremation.         69 

superfluous,  was  disposed  of  for  manure, 
and  deposited  in  many  of  the  neighboring 
gardens.  As  a  result  the  town  was  nearly 
decimated ;  and  the  Sanitary  Record 
adds,  '^  the  same  would  have  occurred,  one 
would  imagine,  even  if  the  coflan-earth  had 
been  absent."  The  special  investigations 
made  by  the  French  Government  on  the 
outbreak  of  the  plague  in  Egypt  in  1823, 
resulted  in  tracing  the  evil  to  the  digging 
up  of  a  disused  burial-ground  at  Kelioub, 
a  town  in  the  vicinity  of  Cairo.  Two 
thousand  died  in  Kelioub,  and  the  mortality 
in  Cairo  was  fearful.  '^Even,"  says  Mr. 
Eassie,  "  the  exhalations  of  a  single  corpse 
buried  twelve  years  have  been  known  to 
engender  a  dangerous  disease  in  a  whole 
convent." 

As  high  scientific  authority  is  seldom 
called  on  to  discover  the  origin  of  local 
diseases  unless  they  assume  a  malignant  or 
epidemic  type,  it  is  safe  to  believe  that 
thousands  of  cases  of  illness  and  death 
are  occasioned  by  the  disinterment  of 
human  remains,  without  the  true  cause  of 
the  malady  being  suspected.    When  grave- 


yo        Earth-Burial  and  Cremation, 

yards  are  dug  up,  who  is  tliere  to  look  into 
the  distant  past  and  say  :  "This  man  died 
of  small-poXj  pass  him  by ;  and  that  one  of 
the  cholera,  disturb  him  not  "  ?  Remember- 
ing that,  a  few  years  since,  the  yellow-fever 
for  two  successive  summers  ravas^ed  the 
South,  how  strong  is  the  presumption  that 
the  second  epidemic  was  largely  occasioned 
by  the  burial  of  the  victims  of  the  first. 
During  the  state  of  panic  that  existed,  men 
dropped  like  leaves,  and,  insecurely  coffined, 
were  hurried  to  common  and  shallow 
graves.  Sometimes  in  the  country  districts 
they  were  buried  almost  where  they  fell. 
And  judging  the  future  by  what  has  been 
demonstrated  in  the  past,  it  seems  inevita- 
ble that  visitations  of  this  frightful  malady 
will  yet  sweep  sections  of  the  country, 
when  infected  burial-spots  are  disturbed 
by  coming  generations  ignorant  of  their 
contents.* 

*  "  It  is  impossible  for  any  one  to  say  how  long  the 
materies  niorbi  may  continue  to  hve  underground. 
Certainly,  if  organic  matter  can  be  boiled  and  frozen 
without  losing  vitality,  and  seeds  3,000  years  old  will 
sprout  when  planted,  it  would  be  hardihood  to  assert 
that  the  poison  of  cholera  or  small-pox,  whatever  it  is, 
may  not  lie  for  many  years  dormant,  but  not  dead, 


Earth- Burial  and  Cre7naiio7i,         Ji 

In  1785,  when  a  general  disinterment 
of  the  old  burial-grounds  commenced  in 
Paris  —  the  work  was  begun  in  the 
Cemetery  of  the  Innocents.  For  years 
those  dwelling  in  its  vicinity  had  com- 
plained of  its  oifensiveness,  and  the  neigh- 
borhood had  become  extremely  unhealthy. 
Although  the  exhumation  was  performed 
in  winter,  a  number  of  grave-diggers  were 
stricken  with  death  on  the  spot,  so  poison- 
ous were  the  gases  generated  by  the  buried 
bodies.  These  foul  gases  emanating  from 
the  saturated  soil  it  had  been  proposed  to 
analyze,  but  the  idea  had  to  be  abandoned, 
for  no  grave-digger  dared  venture  to  assist 
in  its  collection,  knowing  well,  that  almost 
instant  death  resulted  from  its  being  in- 
haled in  undiluted  form  near  a  body. 

Several  instances  of  death  from  this 
cause  are  on  record.  In  1744  at  Mont- 
pellier,  France,  a  case  occurred  in  which 
three  men  died  (and  two  others  narrowly 
escaped    death)    from   entering   a   freshly 

in  the  moisture  and  equable  temperature  of  the  grave." 
— ^Dr.  Eoger  S.  Tracy  in  the  Cydopcedia  of  the  Practice 
of  Medicine,  Ziemssen,  vol.  xix.,  p.  460. 


72        Earth- Burial  and  Cremation, 

dug  grave  in  the  churchyard  of  that  city. 
In  1841  two  grave-diggers  perished  in  de- 
scending into  a  grave  in  St.  Botolph's 
Churchyard,  Aldgate,  England.  "  Dr. 
Keed,"  says  Mr.  Eassie,  "  examined  at 
Manchester  some  graves  which  had  been 
dug  some  hours  previously,  and  found  that 
it  was  necessary  to  hav^e  recourse  to 
mechanical  or  chemical  ventilation  before 
the  men  could  descend  into  them.  The 
carbonic  acid  gas  simply  flowed  into  these 
deeply  dug  graves  from  the  porous  sur- 
roundino'  soil,  like  so  much  water."  ^' These 
gases,"  he  continues,  "  Avill  rise  to  the 
surface  through  eight  or  ten  feet  of  gravely 
just  as  coal-gas  will  do,  and  there  is  prac- 
tically no  limit  to  their  power  of  escape. 
The  danger  is  always  persistent  in  the 
cases  of  dry  and  porous  soils,  exactly  those 
which  are  most  fitted  for  cemetery  pur- 
poses." 

The  overpowering  effluvia  which  rush 
from  freshly  opened  vaults  are  loaded  with 
carbonic  acid  and  organic  matter,  while 
fungi  and  germs  of  infusoria  abound.  Sir 
Edwin    Chadmck.   after   examining   some 


Earth- Bitrial  and  Cremation.         75 

hundreds  of  witnesses  of  every  rank,  was 
of  the  opinion  that  entombment  in  vaults 
was  a  more  dangerous  practice  than  inter- 
ment, because  of  the  liability  of  the  coffins 
to  burst. 

In  the  light  of  these  revelations  can  we 
wonder  that  the  neis-hborhood  of  crowded 
cemeteries  has  been  regarded  as  unhealthy, 
or  that  the  mephitic  atmosphere  in  which 
he  exercises  his  trade,  entails  on  the  grave- 
digger  a  loss  of  at  least  one  third  of  the  na- 
tural duration  of  life  and  working  ability. 

All  these  mischiefs  and  dangers  would 
be  simply  annihilated  by  the  practice  of 
cremation.  In  fact  as  Dr.  R.  S.  Tracy 
tersely  states  (in  Ziemsseii's  Cyclopcedia  of 
the  Practice  of  Medicine^  vol.  xix.,  p.  460)  : 
"The  true  way  of  abolishing  forever  the 
nuisance  of  cemeteries  is  to  burn  the  dead." 
The  lessons  taught  by  sanitary  science 
should  dispel  senseless  superstition.  We 
know  that  cholera  can  reappear  in  localities- 
where  its  victims  have  been  buried,  years 
after  the  original  epidemic,  and  the  same 
remark  applies  to  other  plagues.  Well  may 
we  ask  ourselves  if  it  is  not  a  crime  against 


74        Earth-Burial  and  Cremation, 

humanity,  tlius  to  fly  in  the  face  of  ex- 
perience, and  bury  in  the  earth  bodies  in- 
fected with  germs  of  contagious  diseases, 
turning  the  sod  into  a  nursery  and  hot-bed 
for  the  propagation  of  ills  to  curse  the 
generations  to  come.  Over  sewers  and 
above  churchyards,  says  Sir  Lyon  Playfair, 
bacteria  ^'positively  swarm." 

Peril  exists  even  though  there  be  no  dis- 
interment :  the  infected  corpse,  while 
hidden  in  the  grave,  can  pursue  its  w^ork  of 
harm.  In  a  letter  from  Dr.  Joseph  Akerly, 
•embodied  in  a  publication  by  Dr.  F.  D. 
Allen,  1822,  the  belief  was  ex]3ressed  that 
Trinity  Churchyard  was  an  active  cause  of 
the  yellow -fever  in  New  York  in  1822, 
aggravating  the  malignity  of  the  epidemic 
in  its  vicinity.  Dr.  Adams,  in  his  elaborate 
article  on  Cremation  {Hejpts.  Mass.  State 
Board  of  Healthy  1875)  speaking  of  this 
locality  said : 

"  This  church  was  built  in  1698,  and  the 
:ground  had  been  receiving  the  dead  for  one 
hundred  and  twenty-four  years.  Sometimes 
bodies  were  buried  only  eighteen  inches 
below  the  surface,  and  it  was  impossible  to  dig 


Earth- Burial  and  Cremation.         75 

without  disturbing  the  remains.  During  the 
Revolutionary  war,  this  burial-ground  had 
emitted  pestilential  odors,  and  in  1781  Hessian 
soldiers  were  employed  to  cover  the  ground 
with  a  layer  of  earth,  two  or  three  feet  in 
depth.  This  ground  was  unusually  offensive  in 
1822,  and  annoyed  passengers  on  the  surround- 
ing streets,  previous  to  the  appearance  of  the 
yellow-fever  in  July.  During  the  epidemic, 
the  condition  of  this  churchyard,  and  the 
virulence  of  the  disease  in  its  vicinity,  called 
for  some  active  measures,  and  on  the  night  of 
September  22nd  Dr.  Roosa  covered  the  ground 
with  fifty-two  casks  of  quick-lime,  the  stench 
being  at  the  time  so  excessive  as  to  cause 
several  laborers  to  vomit.  On  the  25th  and 
26th  of  the  month  St.  Paul's  churchyard  and 
the  vaults  of  the  North  Dutch  Church  in 
William  Street  received  the  same  treatment 
these  being  likewise  very  offensive  and  foci  of 
epidemics." 

During  the  epidemic  in  New^  Orleans 
in  1853,  .Dr.  E.  H.  Burton  reported  that 
in  the  Fourth  District  the  mortality  was 
four  hundred  and  fifty-two  per  thousand 
cases,  more  than  double  that  of  any  other. 
In  this  district  were  three  large  cemeteries 
in  which   during  the  previous  year  more 


76         Earth-Burial  a7id  Cremation, 

than  three  thousand  bodies  had  been 
buried.  In  other  districts  the  proximity 
of  cemeteries  seemed  to  aggravate  the 
disease.  Dr.  Hauch  personally  observed^ 
during  the  epidemic  of  cholera  in  Burling- 
ton, Iowa,  in  1850,  that  the  neighborhood 
of  the  city  cemetery  was  free  from  the 
disease  until  about  twenty  interments  had 
been  made  thei'e,  and  then  deaths  began  to 
occur,  and  always  in  the  direction  from  the 
cemetery  in  which  the  wind  blew.  During 
the  prevalence  of  the  plague  in  'Paris  in 
the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century^ 
the  disease  lingered  longest  in  the  neigh- 
borhood of  the  Cimetiere  de  la  Trinite,  and 
there  the  greatest  number  fell  a  sacrifice. 
In  a  report  presented  to  both  Houses  of 
the  British  Parliament,  in  1850,  Dr.  Suth- 
erland testified  that  he  had  witnessed 
several  outbreaks  of  cholera  in  the  vicinity 
of  graveyards,  which  left  no  doubt  on  his 
mind  as  to  the  connection  between  the 
disease  and  such  local  influence. 

The  investigations  of  the  Massachusetts 
Board  of  Health  showed  that  diphtheria 
and  typhoid   fever  were   disseminated  not 


Earth-Burial  and  Creniatio^i.         7  7 

only  by  infectious  emanations  from  sick- 
rooms, but  also  from  the  graves  of  persons 
who  had  died  of  these  complaints.  And 
Dr.  F.  Julius  Le  Moyne,  after  fifty  years 
of  medical  practice,  wrote : 

"  The  inhumation  of  human  bodies,  dead  from 
these  infectious  diseases,  results  in  constantly 
loading  the  atmosphere,  and  polluting  the 
waters,  with  not  only  the  germs  that  arise 
from  simple  putrefaction,  but  also  with  the 
specific  germs  of  the  diseases  from  which  death 
resulted." 

To  this  high-minded  physician  belongs 
the  honor  of  first  introducing  cremation  in 
this  country.  A  life  of  observation  had 
convinced  him  that  the  present  custom  of 
disposing  of  the  dead  entails  pain,  misery, 
and  death  upon  the  living.  Believing,  to 
quote  his  own  words,  that  "  men  are 
always  bound  to  act  in  conformity  to  the 
degree  of  knowledge  they  possess,"  he 
built  the  Washington  crematory  in  the 
face  of  much  ignorant  ridicule  and  opposi- 
tion. The  future  will  honor  the  spirit 
that  guided  him,  and  appreciate  the  wis- 
dom that  his  act  displayed. 


78         Eai'th- Burial  a7id  Cremation. 

Apart  from  the  dangers  arising  from  tlie 
interment  or  disinterment  of  tliose  dying 
from  contagious  diseases,  the  cemetery 
possesses  evils  that  are  inherent.  Dysentery, 
low  fevers,  and  ulcerated  sore-throats  are 
the  disorders  shown  to  prevail  in  a  marked 
degree  among  those  dwelling  in  its  vicinity. 
The  air  becomes  vitiated  and  the  springs 
and  wells,  as  we  have  seen,  contaminated. 
These  are  no  gratuitous  assertions ;  they 
are  amply  verified  by  proven  facts,  as  we 
will  proceed  to  show.  But  first,  it  may  be 
well  to  recall  here  a  remark  we  made 
when  considering  another  branch  of  our 
subject,  that  these  slow-paced,  hidden,  but 
ever  continuing  evils  attract  marked  atten- 
tion only  when  they  occasion  epidemics. 
Until  then  little  effort  is  made  to  discover 
the  source  of  mischief,  and  unaccountable 
cases  of  death  are  generally  attributed  to 
the  mysterious  dispensation  of  Divine 
Providence. 

The  churchyard  which  surrounded  on 
three  sides  Haworth  parsonage,  weakened 
the  constitutions  and  shortened  the  lives 
of  the  gifted  Bronte  sisters,  whose  home  it 


Earth-Burial  and  Cremation.         jq 

waSj  and  hardly  had  their  achievements  in 
the  field  of  fiction  brought  them  fame, 
when  in  turn  they  drooped  and  died.  In 
the  life  of  Charlotte  Bronte,  we  read  that 
"  Haworth  is  built  with  an  utter  disregard 
of  all  sanitary  conditions  :  the  great  old 
churchyard  lies  above  all  the  houses,  and 
it  is  terrible  to  think  how  the  very  water 
springs  of  the  pumps  below  must  be 
poisoned."* 

The  graveyard,  we  are  informed,  extends 
around  the  parsonage  and  garden,  "  on  all 
sides  but  one,"  and  "  is  terribly  full  of 
upright  tombstones."  Referring  again  to 
this  subject  the  writer  says  : 

"  There  is  no  doubt  that  the  proximity  of  the 
crowded  churchyard  rendered  the  Parsonage 
unhealthy,  and  occasioned  much  illness  to  its 
inmates.  Mr.  Bronte  represented  the  unsani- 
tary state  of  Haworth  pretty  forcibly  to  the 
Board  of  Health  ;  and,  after  the  requisite  visits 
from  their  officers,  obtained  a  recommendation 

*  This  quotation  and  the  following  ones  relating  to  th&. 
same  subject  are  taken  from  the  Life  of  Charlotte  Bronte, 
by  E.  C.  Gaskell.  Two  volumes,  D.  Appleton  Sc  Co., 
Pubhshers,  New  York,  1857.  Vol.  i.,  pp.  5,  38,  111  ;  voL 
ii.,  pp.  47,  48,  129,  199. 


So        Earth-Burial  and  Cre^nation. 

that  all  future  interments  In  the  churchyard 
should  be  forbidden.  But  he  was  baffled  by 
the  rate-payers  .  .  .  and  thus  we  find  that 
illness  often  assumed  a  low  typhoid  form  in 
Haworth,  and  fevers  of  various  kinds  visited 
the  place  with  sad  frequency." 

In  the  volumes  from  which  we  have 
quoted  repeated  instauces  are  given  of  the 
residents  of  the  parsonage  being  afflicted 
with  fevers,  sore-throats,  sick-headaches, 
nausea,  and  depressed  spirits ;  and  once 
more  the  author  remarks,  that  "  the 
symptoms  were  probably  aggravated,  if 
not  caused,  by  the  immediate  vicinity  of 
the  churchyard,  '  paved  with  rain-blackened 
tombstones.'  "  Time  and  aQ:ain  Charlotte 
Bronte  left  home  on  account  of  illness,  and 
returned  with  healtli  improved,  only  to 
have  her  former  troubles  reappear.  In 
alluding  to  the  winter  of  1852,  which  was 
passed  by  her  at  the  parsonage,  she  wrote, 
^'  Slow  fever  was  my  continual  companion." 
Her  brilliant  sisters  Emily  and  Anne  had 
died  in  1848  and  1849 — the  former  aged 
29,  and  the  latter  aged  27  years;  and  in 
1855,  her  own  gentle  life — a  life  made  up 


Earth- Burial  and  Cybernation.        8i 

so  largely  of  suffering  and  self-sacrifice — 
slowly  ebbed  away.  In  tlie  untimely  deaths 
of  the  writers  of  Wuthering  Heights,  Agnes 
Grey  J  Jane  Eyre,  Shirley  ^  and  Villette,  the 
world  paid  dearly  for  the  existence  of 
Haworth  churchyard. 

In  1740  a  fatal  epidemic  of  fever  in 
Dublin  having  been  distinctly  traced  to 
emanations  from  the  churchyards,  intra- 
mural interments  were  prohibited.  The 
liistory  of  New  York  City,  as  far  back  as 
1814,  furnishes  another  example  support- 
ing our  thesis.  At  that  time,  according  to 
Dr.  F.  D.  Allen,  who  wrote  in  1822,  a  bat- 
talion  of  militia  was  stationed  on  a  lot  on 
Broadway,  the  rear  of  which  abutted  on  the 
Potter's  Field,  from  which  arose  an  odious 
effluvium.  A  number  of  soldiers  were  at- 
tacked with  diarrhoea  and  fever,  and  al- 
though they  were  removed  at  once,  one  died, 
though  the  others  rapidly  recovered.  The 
Potter's  Field  of  that  day  is  the  present 
Washington  Square,  and  years  after  it  had 
been  closed  to  interments  and  turned  into 
a  parade  ground,  the  houses  fronting  on 
the  Square,  we  have  been  told  by  an  old 


82         Earth- Burial  and  Cremation. 

physician  of  the  city  who  dwelt  there  in 
his  youth,  were  regarded  as  unhealthy,  and 
the  mortality  among  children  living  in  them 
was  unusually  gi'eat. 

A  case  simihir  to  the  above  was  related 
to  Sir  Edwin  Chadwick  by  an  English  of- 
ficer, who  stated  that  while  he  and  his  com- 
mand occupied  as  a  barrack  a  building 
overlooking  a  Liverpool  churchyard,  they 
always  suffered  from  dysentery.  Instances 
are  very  numerous  of  illness  of  this  nature, 
and  also  of  throat  troubles  occasioned  by 
the  inhalation  of  air  vitiated  by  emanations 
from  graveyards.  Mr.  Eassie  mentions  the 
interesting  experiment  of  Professor  Selmi, 
of  Mantua,  who  "  has  lately  discovered,  in 
the  stratum  of  air  which  has  remained  dur- 
ing a  time  of  calm  for  a  certain  period  over 
a  cemetery,  organisms  which  considerably 
vitiate  the  air,  and  are  dangerous  to  life. 
This  was  proved  after  several  examinations. 
When  the  matter  in  question  was  injected 
under  the  skin  of  a  pigeon,  a  typhus-like 
ailment  was  induced,  and  death  ensued  on 
the  third  day."  M.  Pasteur,  whose  re- 
searches in  the  propagation  of  infection  by 


Earth-Burial  and  Cremation.        83 

means  of  living  organisms,  as  bacteria,  liave 
given  him  a  world-wide  reputation,  dis- 
covered that  these  microscopic  forms  of 
life,  developed  in  infinite  exuberance  in 
dead  bodies,  work  their  way  up  through 
the  soil  to  the  surface,  there  to  be  scattered 
in  every  direction  by  the  winds,  with  the 
possibility  of  propagating  innumerable 
diseases.  In  Denmark  a  virulent  cattle 
disease  was  communicated  to  some  cows, 
from  their  grazing  in  a  field,  where  twelve 
years  previously  cattle  dying  of  the  same 
complaint  had  been  buried. 

Long  after  an  epizootic  of  splenic  fever, 
a  disease  that  annually  destroys  thousands 
of  sheep  and  cattle  throughout  Europe, 
M.  Pasteur,  on  investigating  a  fresh  out- 
break of  the  disease,  learned  that,  as  was 
the  case  in  Denmark,  the  cattle  affected 
were  pastured  in  fields  where  previous  vic- 
tims of  this  contagion  had  been  buried. 
His  examination  resulted  in  the  discovery 
that  the  bacteria  had  made  their  way  from 
the  buried  carcasses  to  the  surface;  they 
were  found  in  swarms  in  the  intestinal 
canal  of  earth-worms. 


84        Earth-Burial  and  Cremation. 

The  conclusions  reached  by  Pasteur  from 
his  experiments  receiv^ed  a  startling  con- 
firmation through  the  investigations  of  Dr. 
Domingo  Freire,  of  Rio  Janeiro,  during  the 
epidemic  of  yellow -fever  in  that  city.  So 
important  v^as  his  discovery  that  official 
reports  on  the  subject  were  forwarded  by 
the  consular  officers  at  E-io  to  both  Houses 
of  the  British  Parliament,  and  to  the  State 
Department  at  Washington.  The  in- 
vestigations of  Dr.  Freire  showed  that  the 
soil  of  the  cemeteries,  in  which  the  victims 
of  yellow-fever  were  buried,  was  positively 
alive  with  microbic  organisms  identical  in 
every  way  with  those  in  the  blood  of  pa- 
tients dying  from  the  disease  in  the  hos- 
pitals. ''I  gathered,"  says  this  physician, 
'^from  a  foot  below  the  surface,  some  of 
the  earth  overlying  the  remains  of  a  person 
who  died  of  the  fever  about  a  year  before. 
On  examining  a  small  quantity  with  the 
microscope,  I  found  myriads  of  microbes 
exactly  identical  with  those  found  in  the 
excreta  of  persons  stricken  with  the  disease. 
Many  of  the  organisms  were  making  spon- 
taneous  movements.     These  observations. 


Earth- Burial  and  Cremation.        85 

whicli  were  verified  in  all  their  details  by 
my  assistants,  show  that  the  germs  of  yel- 
low-fever perpetuate  themselves  in  ceme- 
teries. In  fact,  therefore,  the  cemeteries 
are  so  many  nurseries  of  yellow-  fever,  for 
every  year  the  rain  washes  the  soil  and  the 
fever  germs,  with  which  it  is  so  thickly 
sown,  into  the  watercourses  and  distrib- 
utes them  over  the  town  and  neighbor- 
hood." A  guinea-pig,  whose  blood  was 
shown,  by  examination,  to  be  in  a  pure 
state,  was  shut  up  in  a  confined  space  in 
which  was  placed  the  earth  taken  from  the 
grave  just  mentioned.  In  ^-^^  days  the 
animal  was  dead,  and  its  blood  was  found 
to  be  literally  alive  with  the  characteristic 
parasite  (cryptococcus),  in  various  stages 
of  evolution.  The  injection  of  a  gram  of 
blood  charged  with  these  organisms,  into 
the  veins  of  a  rabbit,  was  followed  by 
death  in  a  quarter  of  an  hour.  The  blood 
of  the  rabbit  was  then  found  to  contain  the 
cryptococcus,  and  the  injection  of  a  gram 
of  it  into  a  guinea-pig  was  also  followed 
by  death.  The  blood  of  the  guinea-pig 
swarmed    with    this  microscopic    parasite, 


S6        Earth-Burial  and  Cremation, 

and  another  guinea-pig  when  inoculated 
with  it  died  in  a  short  time ;  its  own 
blood  being  seen  on  examination  to  contain 
the  same  characteristic  organisms  in  pro- 
fusion. The  concludins^  warnino;  of  the 
Doctor,  after  narrating  these  experiments/ 
may  well  awaken  reflection.  "  If  each 
corpse,"  he  says,  "  is  the  bearer  of  millions 
of  millions  of  organisms  that  are  specifics  of 
ill,  imagine  what  a  cemetery  must  be  in 
which  new  foci  are  forming  around  each 
body.  In  the  silence  of  death  these  worlds 
of  organisms,  invisible  to  the  unassisted 
eye,  are  laboring  incessantly  and  unper- 
ceived  to  fill  more  graves  with  more  bodies 
destined  for  their  food  and  for  the  fatal 
perpetuation  of  their  species." 

With  every  contagious  disease  fatal  to 
mankind,  accompanying  its  victims  to  the 
cemetery,  does  not  cremation  become  a 
public  necessity  ? 

Well  may  the  Century  Magazine,  refer- 
ring to  this  subject,  express  astonishment 
that  in  the  face  of  the  many  and  various 
risks  involved  in  our  modes  of  burying  our 
dead,  there  should  have  been  in  modern 


Earth- Burial  and  Cremation.         ^j 

times  so  little  care  and  forethought.  "  If 
the  breezes,"  it  adds,  "that  blow  from 
Greenwood,  Mount  Auburn,  and  Laurel 
Hill  are  laden  with  germs  which  propagate 
the  diseases  which  have  already  slain  our 
kindred,  then  the  most  expensive  feature 
of  those  cities  of  the  dead  is  not  their  cost- 
ly monuments.  It  is  worth  while  to  ask 
ourselves  whether  the  disciples  of  cremation 
have  not  a  truth  on  their  side.  Indeed  the 
whole  matter  of  our  burial  customs  is  one 
which  urgently  needs  revision.  .  .  .  The 
dwellers  in  proximity  to  graveyards  who 
have  been  poisoned  by  their  drainage,  in- 
clude a  vast  multitude  whose  number  has 
never  been  reckoned." 

These  words  are  tame,  however,  when 
compared  with  those  used  by  the  Commit- 
tee of  Physicians,  appointed  by  the  Ameri- 
can Medical  Association  to  consider  the 
question  of  cremation.  The  committee, 
headed  by  Dr.  James  M.  Keller,  in  its  re- 
port to  the  Association  when  in  session  in 
St.  Louis  on  May  6,  1886,  declared,  that, 
"  we  believe  the  horrid  practice  of  earth- 
burial  does  more  to  propagate  the  germs  of 


88        Earth-Burial  and  Cremation. 

disease  and  death,  and  to  spread  desolation 
and  pestilence  over  tlie  human  race,  than 
do  all  man's  ingenuity  and  ignorance  in 
every  other  custom  or  habit.  .  .  .  The 
fatal  delusion,  that  the  earth  renders  harm- 
less and  innocuous  the  corpse,  must  be  dis- 
pelled. Incontrovertible  proof  of  the  fact 
that  the  vicinity  of  graveyards  is  un- 
healthy is  superabundant.  .  .  .  Point  to 
a  city,  if  you  can,  whose  growth  has  de- 
manded the  removal  of  the  dead  from  its 
cemetery,  that  will  not  attest  the  truth  of  the 
rapid  production  of  disease  and  death  in 
all  neighboring  localities.  ^  Grod's  acre ' 
must  become  a  thing  of  the  past.  The 
graveyard  must  be  abandoned.  The  time 
has  come  for  us  to  face  squarely  the  prob- 
lem, how  to  dispose  of  our  dead  with 
safety  to  the  living.  And  your  committee 
has  an  abiding  faith  that  you  will  earnest- 
ly and  at  once  say,  that  the  ^  earth  was  made 
for  the  living,  not  for  the  dead,'  and  that 
pure  air,  pure  water,  and  pure  soil '  are  abso- 
lutely necessary  for  perfect  health.  Only 
skeptics  deny  that  the  dead  do  poison 
these  three  essentials  of  human  life." 


CHAPTER   ly. 

The  Revolting  Features  of  Earth-Burial  Concealed  under 
a  Mass  of  False  Sentiment. — Instances  of  Burial 
Alive. — Condition  of  the  Overcrowded  London  Ceme- 
teries.— Some  Surprising  Statements  by  Bishop  Coxe. 
— ^Description  of  the  Process  of  Cremation. — Objec- 
tion to  Cremation  on  the  Ground  of  its  Destroying  Evi- 
dence of  Crime. — Inconsistencies  Presented  by  Monu- 
ments in  Cemeteries. — Extravagance  Connected  with 
Funerals,  and  the  Need  of  Reform  in  the  Manner  of 
Conducting  them. — The  Obhgation  Imposed  upon 
the  Living  to  Respect  the  Last  Wishes  of  the  Dead.. 

We  liave  thus  far  considered  the  prac- 
tice of  earth-burial  entirely  from  a  sanitary 
standpoint,  and  the  facts  disclosed  by  such 
examination  demonstrate  the  advantages  of 
cremation. 

Unpleasant  truths  connected  with  in- 
humation are  concealed  under  a  mass  of 
false  sentiment ;  and  on  more  than  one 
occasion  when  "  Unveil  thy  bosom,  faith- 
ful tomb,"  has  been  sung  at  funerals,  we 
have  been  in  the  perplexed  state  of  mind 

89 


90         Earth- Burial  and  Cremation. 

of  "Poor  Joe,"  who,  sitting  on  the  steps 
of  "  The  Society  for  the  Propagation  of 
the  Gospel  in  Foreign  Parts/'  wondered 
what  it  was  all  about.  It  seems  to  us 
impossible  that  a  more  revolting  manner 
of  disposing  of  the  body  of  a  beloved 
friend  could  be  devised  than  by  first  freez- 
ing it,  then  encasing  it  in  double  coffins, 
and  burying  it  six  feet  under  the  sod, 
knowing  all  the  while  that  the  grave  will 
soon  fill  with  water,  and  that  worms  and 
putrefaction  will  pursue  their  horrible 
work  for  years  to  come.  A  lady,  member 
•of  the  New  York  Cremation  Society,  has 
informed  us  from  her  personal  knowledge  of 
the  circumstances,  that,  on  the  opening  of 
a  grave  in  a  Connecticut  cemetery,  the 
coffin  was  found  to  have  been  transformed 
into  a  den  of  black  snakes,  and  that  a  num- 
ber of  these  reptiles  were  killed. 

A  similar  instance  is  mentioned  in  the 
little  book  entitled  Cremation^  hy  an 
Eye '  Witness,  viz.,  that  when  excavations 
were  being  made  in  Trinity  Churchyard, 
New  York,  for  the  foundations  of  Trinity 
I^uilding,  one  of  the  graves  was  found  to  be 


Earth- Burial  and  Cremation,        91 

tenanted  by  a  large  snake,  gorged  with  the 
contents  of  the  empty  coffins.  No  amount 
of  sentimentality  is  able  to  neutralize  in 
the  imagination  the  effect  of  these  ugly 
facts ;  and  without  doubt  the  dread 
of  death  itself  is  largely  increased  by  the 
practice  of  earth-burial.  "  The  mere  cessa- 
tion of  existence,"  said  John  Stuart  Mill, 
^^  is  no  evil  to  any  one  ;  the  idea  is  only  for- 
midable through  the  illusion  of  the  imagina- 
tion, which  makes  one  conceive  one's  self 
as  if  one  were  alive  and  feeling  one's  self 
dead.  What  is  odious  in  death  is  not 
death  itself,  but  the  act  of  dying,  and  its 
lugubrious  accompaniments." 

If  the  practice  of  incineration  were  uni- 
versal for  fifty  years,  would  not  public 
opinion  at  the  end  of  that  time  regard  the 
suggestion  of  earth-burial  as  inhuman  ?  And 
if  any  one,  in  defiance  of  the  general  senti- 
ment, then  buried  the  remains  of  a  friend, 
would  he  not  be  condemned  for  his  unfeel- 
ing conduct  in  having  consigned  the  body 
to  the  most  revoltins^  of  fates  ? 

We  shudder  at  the  thought  of  allowing 
a  dead  body  to  lie  upon  the  ground  to  rot, 


92         Earth- Burial  and  Crernation, 

but  is  the  actual  process  any  the  less  re- 
pulsive when  we  have  placed  it  in  the 
grave  under  a  load  of  earth  ? 

The  New  York  Times  of  November  18^ 
1885,  in  alluding  editorially  to  earth-burial^ 
truly  said : 

"  The  horrors  of  the  grave  are  unutterable. 
They  are  hidden  by  the  mantle  of  earth.  We 
venture  to  say  that  if  the  slow  process  of  de- 
composition in  the  grave  were  not  concealed, 
if  it  could  be  seen  and  followed  by  the  living, 
the  number  of  those  who  advocate  the  use  of 
fire,  the  great  purifier,  would  speedily  and  won- 
derfully increase." 

When  we  free  our  minds  from  the 
tyranny  of  custom,  and  regard  this  ques- 
tion calmly  and  without  prejudice,  does  it 
not  seem  a  mockery  and  a  sham  to  robe  a 
dead  friend  mth  affectionate  care,  and  after 
placing  him  in  a  receptacle  of  rosewood 
and  satin,  silver  and  ]3late-glass,  to  cover 
the  whole  with  flowers  and  hurry  him  in  a 
few  hours  to  the  fate  we  have  spoken  of? 
When  we  leave  him  buried  in  the  cold,  wet 
earth,  or  when  we  consign  him  to  the  un> 
speakable  horror  of  a  public  charnel  vault^ 


Earth-Burial  and  Cremation.        93 

do  we  not  seem  to  have  played  a  farce  pre- 
luding a  hideous  tragedy  % 

Again,  a  dread  of  being  buried  alive 
prevails  among  mankind  to  such  an  extent, 
that  hardly  a  discussion  on  the  subject  of 
burial  can  arise  without  winning  favor  for 
incineration  as  a  method  that  affords  an 
escape  from  this  terrible  fate.  How  fre- 
quently living  persons  are  entombed  it  is 
of  course  impossible  to  say,  as  few  bodies 
are  ever  disinterred  before  all  evidence  of 
the  struggle  for  life  would  have  been  de- 
stroyed. But  the  dread  of  this  contin- 
gency is  not  imaginary,  as  is  shown  by 
examples  occasionally  brought  to  our  at- 
tention.* 

The  London  Lancet  of  December  8, 
1877,  mentions  a  case  occurring  in  Naples, 
where,  on  the  opening  of  a  grave  shortly 
after  burial,  the  desperate  contortions  and 
efforts  of  the  victim  to  escape,  on  recover- 

*  "  The  distortion  of  features  and  change  of  posture 
in  bodies,  caused  by  the  distending  force  of  the  gases 
of  putrefaction,  will  not  account  for  instances  of  bodies 
found  inside  the  doors  of  vaults,  with  coffins  broken 
open,  and  every  indication  of  desperate  struggles  for 
escape." — Ziemssen's  CyclopcBdia  of  the  Practice  of 
Medicine,  vol.  xix.,  pp.  451,  452. 


94        Earth- Burial  and  Cremation. 

ing  coDsciousness,  had  been  so  great  as  to 
tear  portions  of  the  clothes  from  the  body 
and  even  to  fracture  some  of  the  bones. 
The  physician  who  granted  the  death  cer- 
tificate and  the  mayor  who  permitted  the 
interment  were  imprisoned  three  months 
for  ^'involuntary  manslaughter," — but  what 
solace  could  that  brino^  to  the  horrified 
relatives  ?  An  instance  similar  to^  the 
above  was  mentioned  in  the  Elmira  (N.  Y.) 
Gazette  of  April  27,  1881.  A  young 
woman,  named  Mosely,  was  supposed  to 
have  died  suddenly  in  West  Middlesex, 
Pa.  IN^ot  many  days  after  the  funeral 
some  friends  arrived  from  Missouri  to 
remove  her  remains  West,  and  on  opening 
the  coffin,  it  was  discovered  that  she  had 
been  buried  alive  while  in  a  trance,  had 
awakened  in  her  grave,  and  turned  herself 
over.  She  wj!s  lying  face  downward,  her 
hands  clenched  in  her  hair,  and  her  dis- 
torted features  plainly  showing  the  inten- 
sity of  suffering  she  had  undergone.  It 
was  apparent  that  in  the  necessarily  short 
interval  that  ensued  between  her  return  to 
consciousness  and  her  death  by  suffocation, 


Earth- Burial  and  Cremation.        95 

slie  had  comprehended  her  dismal  situa- 
tion, and  turning  upon  her  face,  had  en- 
deavored to  throw  open  the  lid  of  the 
coffin,  by  pushing  against  it  with  her  back. 
The  New  York  Herald  of  June  3,  1891, 
contained  the  following  telegraphic  de- 
spatch : 

"  Eldon,  Iowa,  June  2,  i8gi. 

"  When  the  remains  of  Miss  Alice  Wood-^ 
ward,  at  Douds,  Iowa,  were  unearthed  to-day, 
the  young  lady's  body  was  found  to  be  lying 
face  down  in  the  coffin.  The  appearance  of  the 
corpse  clearly  indicated  that  a  terrible  death- 
struggle  had  occurred  in  the  grave.  It  is 
believed  that  the  young  lady,  who  was  a 
beautiful  and  accomplished  girl,  was  buried 
while  in  a  trance." 

How  many  secrets  of  this  nature  are  hid- 
den under  ground  will  never  be  known ; 
but  the  close  resemblance  of  suspended 
animation  to  death  warns  us  of  the  perils 
of  hasty  interment. 

In  the  history  of  earth-burial  are  found 
the  strong  arguments  in  favor  of  crema- 
tion,— a  practice  certainly  unworthy  of 
respect,  if  it  has  no  advantages  over  that 


96         Earth-Burial  and  Cremation. 

of  inhumation.     In  tlie  words  of  Professor 
Coletti,  Rector  of  the  University  of  Padua : 

**  Man  should  disappear  and  not  rot  ;  he 
should  no  more  be  transformed  into  a  mass  of 
corruption — the  source  of  noisome  exhalations 
— than  into  a  grotesque  mummy,  a  shapeless 
compound  of  pitch,  resin,  and  perfumes  ;  man 
should  become  a  handful  of  ashes  and  nothing 
more." 

The  advantages  of  cremation,  and  the 
magnitude  and  result  of  the  evils  of  inhu- 
mation, are  so  well  shown  by  Mr.  W.  Cave 
Thomas  in  his  Social  JSfotes,  that  we  can- 
not forbear  quoting  at  length  from  him  in 
this  connection.  While  describing  specifi- 
cally the  condition  of  things  in  Great 
Britain,  his  words  vividly  illustrate  the 
abominations  of  earth-burial  wherever  there 
is  a  dense  population. 

"'  Cremation,"  says  Mr.  Thomas,  ''  insures  the 
purity  of  the  atmosphere  and  of  the  springs, 
both  of  which  are  contaminated  to  a  frightful 
and  incalculable  extent  by  the  present  system 
of  interment,  as  we  shall  immediately  show. 
Data  shall  be  given  which  will  put  the  state  of 


Earth-Burial  and  Cremation.         97 

things  resulting  from  this  system  in  its  most 
*appaUing  Hght.  The  registered  deaths  in  the 
United  Kingdom  for  1 874  were  699,747.  Taking 
this  as  an  approximate  annual  death  registry 
for  Great  Britain,  and  allowing  ten  years  for 
the  complete  resolution  of  the  body  under  the 
present  mode  of  interment — a  period,  it  is  be- 
lieved, considerably  below  the  mark, — we  have 
in  the  Kingdom  nearly  seven  millions  of  dead 
bodies  lying  in  various  stages  of  decomposition, 
and  giving  off  noxious  exhalations  by  means  of 
percolation  to  the  atmosphere,  and  by  sending 
down  contaminating  matter  to  the  subterranean 
reservoirs.  Calculating  for  London  alone,  there 
were,  in  1872,  76,634  deaths  ;  there  are,  there- 
fore, at  a  rough  estimate,  nearly  a  million  of 
human  bodies  festering  in  its  immediate  neigh- 
borhood. Fortunately  for  the  springs,  some 
of  the  cemeteries  are  on  clayey  soils,  and  bodies 
interred  in  them  are,  to  a  certain  extent,  locked 
up  in  their  clay  vaults  only  to  be  a  source  of 
mischief  when  they  are  opened.  Some  of  these 
graves  have  been  described,  by  one  who  is 
bound  to  know,  as  *  very  cess-pools  of  human 
remains,'  which  give  forth  their  noxious  gases 
whenever  broken  into  for  the  purpose  of  some 
fresh  interment,  as  many  a  mourner  has  ex- 
perienced to  his  cost.  Bodies,  on  the  other 
hand,  which  have  been  buried  in  sandy  soils,  are 
more  quickly  resolved — say  in  some  six  or  seven 


98         Earth- Burial  and  Cremation, 

years.  Interments  in  sandy  soils,  however,  are 
more  likely  to  endanger  the  health  of  the 
living,  for  by  percolation  the  fluids  contaminate 
the  springs,  and  the  foul  gases  are  exhaled  into 
the  atmosphere.  ...  It  would  be  a  good 
bargain  if  we  could  obtain  the  adoption  of 
cremation  at  the  price  of  double  fees." 

The  publication,  in  1839,  by  Mr.  George 
A.  Walker,  an  English  surgeon,  of  a  vol- 
ume entitled,  Gatherings  from  GraveyardSy 
Especially  Those  of  London^  first  called 
the  attention  of  the-  British  Parliament  to 
the  horrible  condition  of  the  city  ceme- 
teries. A  committee  was  appointed  thor- 
oughly to  investigate  the  subject,  and  in 
their  report,  dated  June  14,  1842,  it  was. 
shown  that  public  graves  were  dug  to 
contain  thirty  or  forty  bodies,  piled  to 
within  a  foot  or  two  of  the  surface  and 
left  open  until  full.  In  digging  these 
graves,  great  quantities  of  bones  were  ex- 
humed, which  were  thrown  together  in  a. 
common  vault,  while  the  soil  was  saturated 
with  putrid  fluids,  and  exhaled  the  most 
offensive  odors.  The  physicians  who  were 
examined  by  the  committee  all  testified  that 


Earth-Burial  and  Cremation.        99 

typhus  and  other  fevers    were   especially 
prevalent  in  the  vicinity  of  these  grounds. 

"  In  the  metropolis,"  adds  the  report,  *'  on 
spaces  of  ground  which  do  not  exceed  two 
hundred  and  three  acres,  closely  surrounded 
by  the  abodes  of  the  living,  layer  upon  layer, 
each  consisting  of  a  population  numerically 
equivalent  to  a  large  army  of  twenty  thousand 
adults,  and  nearly  thirty  thousand  youths  and 
children,  is  every  year  imperfectly  interred. 
Within  the  period  of  the  existence  of  the 
present  generation,  upwards  of  a  million  of  the 
dead  must  have  been  interred  in  these  same 
spaces." 

It  is  stated  by  Mr.  Walker,  that  in  the 
course  of  sixteen  years  from  ten  to  twelve 
thousand  of  the  dead  of  London  were 
buried  in  a  plot  of  ground  in  which  only 
about  two  hundred  should  have  been  laid. 

At  the  present  time  upwards  of  two 
thousand  acres  of  land,  valued  at  over 
$1,250,000,  are  devoted  to  the  dead  of  the 
metropolis.  This  is  equivalent  to  more 
than  three  square  miles;  and  considering 
the  density  of  the  population  in  and  around 
London,  and  the  profitable  uses  to  which 


lOO      Earth- Burial  and  Cr equation. 

eveiy  acre  of  ground  could  be  put,  it  seems 
a  large  area  of  land  to  set  apart  exclusively 
for  the  dead.  Nevertheless  it  is  inade- 
quate to  meet  the  requirements  for  which 
it  is  consecrated.  Burial  acts  have  been 
repeatedly  passed  by  the  Parliament  of 
Groat  Britain  for  the  regulation  of  ceme- 
teries, but  they  are  evaded ;  and  if  an 
attempt  were  made  to  enforce  them  to  the 
letter,  probably  every  large  city  of  Eng- 
land would  be  obliged  by  necessity  to 
adopt  cremation.  To  carry  out  the  burial 
laws  strictly,  London  alone,  says  Mr. 
Walter  Breen,  would  require  eighty  acres 
of  land  each  year  to  be  given  over  to  the 
use  of  the  dead.  To  do  this  is  imprac- 
ticable, if  not  impossible.  As  a  result,  in 
a  large  cemetery  near  London  (Ilford)  the 
poor  are  buried  in  trenches  sixty  feet  long 
and  sixteen  feet  deep,  in  which  upwards  of 
three  hundred  coffins  are  deposited,  tier 
above  tier,  like  bricks  in  a  wall ;  and  yet, 
says  the  gentleman  we  have  just  quoted, 

*'  this  putrescent  mass  of  animal  matter  is  not 
even  allowed  to  rot  undisturbed,  the  companies 
claiming  the  right  of  re-opening  the  pit  in  the 


Earth  -  Burial  and  Cremation.       i  o  i 

course  of  ten  years  and  preparing  it  for  the 
reception  of  another  mountain  of  cofifins, — and 
so  this  hideous  process  goes  on  from  day  to 
day.  These  dreadful  holes  full  of  slowly 
decaying  animal  matter  are  permitted  to  exist 
and  continue  to  poison  the  air  and  water,  and 
act  as  hot-beds  of  disease  in  the  midst  or  near 
great  centres  of  population." 

Realizing  wliat  earth-burial  is,  and  what 
it  too  often  necessitates,  it  would  seem 
easy  for  a  confirmed  inhumationist  to 
change  his  belief,  and  agree  with  Dr.  Anelli 
that  burial  recalls  the  Middle  Ages,  and 
even  the  times  of  barbarism,  while  cre- 
mation represents  progress  and  civiliza- 
tion. 

It  must  be  self-evident  to  every  rational 
being  that  London  would  be  the  gainer  if 
the  two  thousand  acres  of  land  embraced 
in  its  cemeteries  should  cease  to  produce 
disease,  and  yield,  instead,  a  portion  of  the 
wheat  which  is  annually  imported  from 
America.  We  are  reminded  of  the  words 
of  the  late  Bishop  of  Manchester,  who, 
referring  in  an  address  to  his  recent  conse- 
cration of  a  cemetery,  remarked  :     ''  Here 


I02      Earth- Burial  and  Cremation. 

is  another  liundrecl  acres  of  laud  with- 
drawn from  the  food-producing  area  of  this 
country  forever."  Continuing,  he  said : 
"I  feel  convinced  that  before  Ions:  we 
shall  have  to  face  this  problem,  '  How  to 
buiy  our  dead  out  of  our  sight '  more 
practically  and  more  seriously  than  we 
have  hitherto  done.  ...  I  hold  that 
the  earth  was  made  not  for  the  dead, 
but  for  the  living " ;  and  he  added : 
"  Cemeteries  are  becoming  not  only  a  diffi- 
culty, an  expense,  and  an  inconvenience, 
but  an  actual  danger." 

Writers  favoring  earth-burial  ignore  facts 
similar  to  those  just  stated,  and  indulge 
either  in  sentiment  or  ridicule,  like  Bishop 
A.  Cleveland  Coxe  in  his  article  in  The 
Forum  of  March,  1886.  He  tells  us  that 
Christian  civilization  "  substituted  for  the 
burning  of  beloved  bodies  the  gentle  inhu- 
mation of  the  cemetery.  They  were  laid," 
he  adds,  "  asleep.  To  the  secret  and 
decent  chemistry  of  nature  the  Christian 
surrendered  his  dead."  How  strangely 
this  lano^uao^e  reads  contrasted  with  som- 
bre  facts.     Why  does  the  Bishop  not  tell 


Earth' Burial  a7zd  Crematio7i.       103 

lis  how  ^'the  gentle  inhumation  of  the 
cemetery  "  frequently  affects  the  living  ? — 
why  does  he  not  describe  the  manner  in 
which  too  often,  as  in  the  trenches  at 
Ilford,  the  dead  are  "  laid  asleep  "  ?  Nearly 
a  year  before  the  Bishop  penned  those 
words  Sir  Lyon  Playfair  wrote  :  "  I  have 
officially  inspected  many  churchyards,  and 
made  reports  on  their  state,  which,  even  to 
re-read,  make  me  shudder." 

Those  who  have  given  the  subject  atten- 
tion are  aware  that  for  years  sanitarians 
and  physicians,  acting  individually  or  on 
committees  appointed  by  medical  associa- 
tions, have  repeatedly  approved  cremation, 
after  applying  the  skill  that  results  from 
scientific  training  to  an  investigation  of  the 
effect  of  cemeteries  on  the  public  health. 
Knowing  this,  we  read  with  astonishment 
the  statement  of  Bishop  Coxe,  that  ^'  there 
has  been  no  assemblage  of  thinkers  to  give 
the  subject  a  dispassionate  consideration." 
The  most  cursory  examination  of  the  liter- 
ature of  cremation  would  have  saved  him 
from  making  an  assertion  like  this.  Re- 
ferring to  cremation,  he  adds:  ''Those  who 


104      Earth- Burial  and  Cremation. 

are  the  first  to  be  ignited  by  a  craze  are 
known  as  '  cranks.'  "  How  can  this  state- 
ment be  reconciled  with  the  fact  that, 
twelve  years  before  the  Bisho23  wrote  his 
article,  some  of  the  most  distinguished  phy- 
sicians of  Italy  and  England  were  the  first 
to  organize  the  reform  in  their  respective 
countries  and  were  the  most  ardent  in  sup- 
port of  it  ?  How  can  it  be  reconciled  mth 
the  fact  that  Sir  Henry  Thompson  and  Sir 
T.  Spencer  Wells,  in  their  efforts  to  intro- 
duce cremation  in  England,  were  strongly 
supported  by  a  petition  to  the  Home  Secre- 
tary signed  by  over  a  hundred  members  of 
the  British  Medical  Association  ?  Does 
Bishop  Coxe  mean  to  say  that  these  gentle- 
men were  affected  by  a  "  craze,"  and  would 
he  have  us  believe  that  he  resrards  them  as 
"  cranks  "  ?  Is  it  his  opinion  that  Sir  Lyon 
Playfair  labors  under  a  delusion  ?  That 
scientist,  after  making  his  official  investiga- 
tions, wrote  :  "  In  most  of  our  churchyards 
the  dead  are  harming  the  living  by  destroy- 
ing the  soil,  fouling  the  air,  contaminating 
water-springs,  and  spreading  the  seeds  of 
disease." 


Earth- Burial  and  Cremation,       105 

Unfortunately  for  humanity,  these  are 
the  words  of  truth  and  soberness, — not 
the  words  of  madness.  And  in  our  own 
country  cremation  never  had  an  earlier  or 
a  stronger  champion  for  years  than  it  had 
in  one  of  our  greatest  physicians,  Professor 
Samuel  D.  Grross. 

Pray,  does  the  Bishop  regard  him  alsa 
as  a  "  crank  "  ? 

"  If  more  was  known,"  wrote  Professor  Gross, 
"  about  the  human  frame  while  undergoing  de- 
composition, people  would  turn  with  horror 
from  the  custom  of  burying  their  dead.  If 
people  knew  what  physicians  know,  what  they 
have  learned  in  the  dissecting-room,  they  would 
look  upon  burning  the  human  body  as  a  beau- 
tiful art  in  comparison  with  bur}.^ing  it.  There 
is  something  eminently  repulsive  to  me  about 
the  idea  of  lying  a  few  feet  under  ground  for  a 
century,  or  perhaps  two  centuries,  going  through 
the  process  of  decomposition.  When  I  die  I 
want  my  body  to  be  burned.  Any  unpreju- 
diced mind  needs  but  little  time  to  reflect  in 
forming  a  conclusion  as  to  which  is  the  better 
method  of  disposing  of  the  body.  Common- 
sense  and  reason  proclaim  in  favor  of  crema- 
tion." 


io6      Earth- Burial  and  Cremation, 

Thus  wrote  Professor  Gross,  who  died  in 
1885,  and  whose  body  was  incinerated  at 
Washington,  Pa.  Speaking  of  him,  Dr. 
Hugo  Erichsen  said  : 

"  Perhaps  no  man  ever  drew  breath  who  was 
better  qualified  to  express  an  opinion  on  this 
subject.  Who  is  so  well  entitled  to  form  a 
correct  opinion  as  the  man  who  for  nearly 
three  quarters  of  a  century  had  the  closest 
possible  relations  with  the  dying  and  the 
dead  ?  " 

The  statements  of  Bishop  Coxe  himself 
stand  as  his  most  fatal  accusers,  for  they 
show  him  strangely  unfamiliar  with  the 
subject  that  he  presumes  to  discuss.  His 
account  of  an  incineration  is  in  itself  proof 
that  he  never  witnessed  one.  It  reads  like 
a  product  of  the  imagination,  and  is  value- 
less and  misleading  in  every  essential  re- 
spect. It  is  malicious,  too,  and  justifies  the 
language  we  have  applied  to  it. 

These  strictures  we  do  not  make  rashly. 
The  writer  of  this  volume  has  been  associ- 
ated with  the  cremation  movement  for  over 
ten  years.     While  President  of  the  Com- 


Earth- Burial  and  Cremation,       107 

pany  whose  crematoiy  is  at  Fresh  Pond, 
Long  Island,  he  attended  over  sixty  incin- 
erations ;  and  having  personally  inspected 
the  methods  employed  in  the  crematories 
at  Buffalo,  Lancaster,  Paris,  and  Milan,  he 
liopes  that  he  does  not  transgress  the 
bounds  of  modesty  in  laying  claim  to  a 
little  practical  knowledge  of  the  subject. 
The  Rev.  John  W.  Chad  wick,  replying  to 
the  Bishop  in  Tlie  Forum  for  May,  1886, 
said : 

"  Those  of  us  who  beHeved  in  cremation  as 
a  wise  and  practical  reform  before  we  read  his 
article,  having  read  it  carefully,  believe  in 
cremation  certainly  as  much  as  ever,  and  per- 
haps a  little  more." 

Adopting  as  our  own  Mr.  Chadwick's 
estimate  of  the  value  of  Bishop  Coxe's 
essay,  as  shown  in  the  significant  sentence 
just  quoted,  let  us  pass  to  a  more  pleas- 
ing branch  of  our  subject,  and  consider  the 
remedy  for  the  evils  we  have  spoken  of. 
By  means  of  the^  modern  and  scientific 
method  of  cremation,  the  human  body, 
within  two  hours,  can  be  reduced  to  a  few 


io8      Earth-Burial  a7id  Cremation. 

pounds  of  white  and  odorless  ashes.  There 
is  nothing  in  the  operation  that  can  shock 
the  feelings  of  the  most  sensitive,  and  the 
process,  when  thoroughly  examined  and 
understood,  will  be  found  its  own  best 
advocate. 

"  I  have  stood,"  says  an  eye-witness,  "  before 
the  threshold  of  the  crematory  with  a  faltering- 
heart.  ...  I  have  trembled  at  the  thought 
of  using  fire  beside  the  form  of  one  whom  I  had 
loved.  But  when,  in  obedience  to  his  own 
dying  request,  I  saw  the  door  of  the  cinerator 
taken  down,  its  rosy  light  shine  forth,  and  his 
peaceful  form,  enrobed  in  white,  laid  there  at 
rest  amid  a  loveliness  that  was  simply  fasci- 
nating to  the  eye,  and  without  a  glimpse  of 
flames  or  fire  or  coals  or  smoke,  I  said,  and 
say  so  still,  this  method,  beyond  all  methods  I 
have  seen,  is  the  most  pleasing  to  the  senses, 
the  most  charming  to  the  imagination,  and  the 
most  grateful  to  the  memory." 

Opposition  to  incineration  springs  chiefly 
from  ignorance  of  the  manner  in  which  it 
is  effected ;  and  to  remove  all  misappre- 
hension, it  cannot  be  too  distinctly  stated, 
that  the  body  never  rests  in  flames,  while 


Earth-Burial  and  Cremation.      109 

during  the  entire  process  there  is  no  fire 
or  smoke  or  odor  or  noise  to  grieve  in  any 
manner  the  bereaved.  The  consuming 
chamber  in  which  the  body  is  placed  is  built 
of  fire-clay  and  is  capable  of  resisting  the 
highest  temperature.  Under  it  and  around 
it  the  fire  circulates,  but  it  cannot  enter  in.* 

*  This  description  applies  to  the  crematory  furnaces  at 
Fresh  Pond,  L.  I.,  and  to  others  in  the  United  States, 
where  the  flames  do  not  enter  the  retort.  In  this  and  in 
other  respects  these  furnaces  differ  from  the  two  systems 
of  gas  furnace  invented  by  Professors  Venini  and  Gorini, 
of  Italy.  The  gas  furnaces,  however,  we  must  frankly 
admit,  possess  points  decidedly  in  their  favor,  for  they 
are  heated  with  much  less  fuel  and  in  a  great  deal  less 
time  than  furnaces  with  closed  retorts  ;  consequently 
they  are  exempt  from  the  long-continued,  terrible  tem- 
perature which  furnaces  of  the  latter  description  are 
compelled  to  endure. 

Professor  Venini  informed  the  writer  in  August,  1891, 
in  Milan,  that  the  furnace  of  his  design  in  the  crema- 
tory of  that  city,  had  incinerated  several  hundred  bodies 
without  being  rebuilt,  and  that  the  necessary  repairs 
required  from  year  to  year  were  trifling.  The  same 
statement  was  subsequently  made  to  the  A\T.'iter  by  the 
engineer  employed  in  the  crematory  in  Pere  la  Chaise 
Cemetery,  Paris,  concerning  the  furnaces  of  that  estab- 
lishment. In  this  crematory,  one  of  the  furnaces  is  on 
the  regenerating  and  the  other  on  the  Gorini  principle — 
the  retort  in  each  case  admitting  the  flame. 

Although  nearly  four  hundred  bodies  are  burned  in 
these  furnaces  every  month,  a  close  inspection  of  their 
walls  showed  no  traces  of  fissures  ;   and  the  same  re- 


iio      Earth- Btirial  and  Cre^nation. 

The  interior,  smooth,  almost  polished^ 
and  white  from  the  surrounding  heat,  pre- 
sents an  aspect  of  absolute,  dazzling  purity ; 
and  as  the  body  is  the  only  solid  matter 
introduced,  the  product  is  simply  the  ashes 
of  that  body.  During  the  entire  process 
of  incineration  the  remains  are  hidden  from 
view  ;  although  in  special  instances,  where 
arrangements  for  watching  the  operation 
have  been  made,  no  smoke,  no  unsightly 
transformations  of  the  body  were  observed. 
The  heated  air  soon  chano-es  it  to  a  trans- 
lucent  white,  and  from  this  it  crumbles 
into  ashes.  The  active  and  consuming 
agent  is  simply  air,  raised  to  a  temperature 
equivalent  to  2,800  degrees  Fahr.;  and 
this,  cooled  temporarily  by  the  inrushing 
current  on  the  opening  of  the  door  of 
the  retort,  produces  in  the  interior  a 
most  beautiful  display  of  vibrating  ruddy 
tints. 

mark  applies  to  the  avails  of  the  furnace  in  the  crema- 
tory at  Milan. 

The  two  crematories  in  the  State  of  New  York  using 
gas  furnaces  are  those  in  the  cities  of  Troy  and  Buffalo. 
They  are  according  to  the  design  of  Professor  Venini,  and 
give,  w^e  are  informed,  entire  satisfaction. 


Earth-Burial  and  Cremation.       1 1  r 

One  of  tlie  first  who  witnessed  this 
method  of  cremation  said : 

"  As  we  turned  away  from  the  incinerator 
where  we  had  left  the  body  of  our  friend,  it 
was  pleasant  to  think  of  him  still  resting  in  its 
rosy  light,  surrounded  and  enveloped  by  what 
seemed  to  us  floods  of  purity." 

When  all  is  over,  nothing  remains  but  a 
few  fragments  of  calcined  bones  and  deli- 
cate white  ashes,  perfectly  pure  and  odor- 
less. In  all  candor,  is  not  this  a  more 
fitting  destiny  for  the  cast-off  body  than 
that  it  should  remain  for  years  '^  a  mass 
of  loathsome  and  death-bearing  putrefac- 
tion"? By  means  of  a  Siemens  furnace, 
Sir  Henry  Thompson  reduced  a  body 
weighing  no  less  than  two  hundred  and 
twenty-seven  pounds,  to  ^nq  pounds  of 
ashes  within  the  space  of  fifty-five  minutes, 
and  at  a  cost  of  less  than  a  dollar  for  fuel. 
"After  such  brilliant  results,"  says  Mr, 
Eassie — '^  results  at  once  exjDeditious,  clean- 
ly, and  economical — well  might  Sir  Henry 
Thompson  challenge  Mr.  Holland  (Medical 
Inspector    of    Burials    for    England    and 


112      Earth' Burial  and  Cremation. 

Wales)  '  to  produce  so  fair  a  result  from 
all  the  costly  and  carefully  managed  ceme- 
teries in  the  kingdom/  and  safely  might  he 
'even  oifer  him  twenty  years  in  order  to 
elaborate  the  process."  * 

All  that  has  been  said  notwithstand- 
ing, should  cremation  to  any  one  still 
present  distressing  features,  let  him  re- 
member that  neither  science,  philosophy, 
nor  religion  can  devise  a  method  by 
which  an  eternal  parting  from  the  form 
of  one  we  have  loved  can  be  else  than 
distressing.  Let  him  remember  that,  al- 
though the  thought  of  cremation  may 
arouse  unpleasant  emotions,  yet  the  entire 
process  is  complete  within  an  hour,  while, 
by  burying,  the  revolting  phases  of  de- 
composition continue  for  years,  and  may 
outlast  a  century.  In  the  words  of  the 
great  scientist,  whose  experiment  we 
have  related :  '^  Each  mode  of  burial, 
whether    in    soil,    in    wood,    in    stone,  or 

*  "  It  is  plain  without  argument  that  a  complete  de- 
struction of  the  body  by  these  modern  methods  is,  in  a 
sanitary  point  of  view,  far  preferable  to  burial." — Dr.  R. 
S.  Tracy  in  the  Cyclopcedia  of  the  Practice  of  Medicine, 
-Ziemssen,  vol.  xix. ,  p.  455. 


Earth- Burial  and  Cremation,       113 

metal,  is  but  an  other  contrivance  to  delay, 
but  never  to  prevent,  the  inevitable  change. 
When  the  body  is  burned,  and  so  restored 
at  once  to  its  original  elements,  nature's 
work  is  hastened,  her  design  anticipated, 
that  is  all."  ^'For  more  than  twenty 
years,"  says  Dr.  Parker,  "  I  have  believed 
that  the  true  way  of  disposing  of  the 
human  dead  is  by  rapid  burning — I  say 
rapid,  for  chemistry  teaches  us  that  de- 
composition of  the  body,  when  interred, 
is  but  a  slow  process  of  combustion." 

The  charge  that  cremation  would  destroy 
evidence  of  guilt  in  cases  of  poisoning,  is  by 
no  means  as  serious  as  at  first  sight  might 
appear.  By  every  cremation  company 
known  to  us  extraordinary  precautions  are 
taken  to  obviate  this  danger,  as  appears 
from  the  rules  relating  to  the  subject  laid 
down  by  the  managers  of  the  crematory  at 
Fresh  Pond,  Long  Island;  and  these  are 
essentially  the  same  as  those  followed  by 
other  companies  throughout  the  country. 
An  application  for  incineration  at  Fresh 
Pond  must  be  made  by  the  person  hav- 
ing charge  of  the  disposal  of  the  body,  or 


114      Earth- Burial  and  Cremation. 

his  representative,  and  a  printed  list  of 
questions  in  blank,  prepared  by  the  com- 
pany, must  be  filled  out  and  signed  by 
such  person  and  filed  in  the  company's 
office.  An  original  certificate  from  the 
physician  who  attended  the  deceased,  stat- 
ing time,  place,  and  cause  of  death,  must 
also  be  presented  before  an  order  directing 
the  incineration  will  be  granted  to  the  ap- 
plicant. Upon  the  arrival  of  the  remains 
at  the  crematory,  a  burial  permit  issued 
by  the  Board  of  Health,  the  physician's 
certificate  already  referred  to,  and  the 
order  authorizing  the  incineration  by  the 
company  must  be  delivered  to  the  superin- 
tendent ;  and  the  rule  is  absolute  that  un- 
less these  three  papers  are  complete  in 
every  respect  and  duly  presented,  the  in- 
cineration under  no  circumstances  will  be 
allowed  to  take  place.  We  should  remem- 
ber that  suspicious  circumstances  warrant- 
ing official  investigation  are  almost  invari- 
ably observed  before  or  about  the  time  of 
death,  and  if  a  coroner's  jury  is  not  impan- 
eled before  a  burial,  the  chances  are  very 
small  that  one  will  be  impaneled  afterward. 


Earth-Burial  and  Cremation.      115 

Besides,  in  the  few  instances  where  bodies 
are  disinterred  for  post-mortem  investiga- 
tions, it  is  almost  certain  that  enough  was 
previously  known  or  suspected  to  have 
prevented  such  bodies  from  being  incin- 
erated. Under  suspicious  circumstances, 
or  pending  the  settlement  of  disputes, 
bodies  are  sometimes  buried,  as  it  is  known 
that  if  necessary  they  can  be  disinterred  ; 
but  in  such  cases  incineration  would,  as  a 
precaution,  be  forbidden.*  Not  one  body 
in  a  million,  according  to  the  statement  of 
a  chemist  to  Dr.  Peterson,  is  disinterred  to 
be  examined  for  suspected  poisoning ;  still 
in  case  of  incineration  mineral  poisons 
could  be  discovered  in  the  ashes,  or  sub- 
limated in  the  gases,  while,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  the  one  alkaloid  strychnia  (we  quote 

*  At  the  suggestion  of  Sir  Henry  Thompson  a  careful 
and  systematic  inquiry  was  made  throughout  England 
and  Wales  to  ascertain  the  number  of  exhumations  for 
the  last  twenty  years.  From  the  data  obtained  we 
learn  that  the  average  number  of  exhumations  made  in 
a  year  is  only  five,  and  less  than  one  yearly  for  poison. 
We  recognize  the  full  significance  of  this  statement 
on  learning  that  the  total  number  of  deaths  in  England 
and  Wales  durmg  the  year  1886  was  531 ,216.— Modern 
Cremation,  pp.  114,  118,  119. 


ii6      Earth-Burial  and  Cremation, 

from  Dr.  Peterson),  all  vegetable  j)oisoiis — 
those  most  to  be  dreaded — decompose 
witli  the  body,  and  therefore  as  to  these 
the  result  will  be  the  same  whether  the 
body  be  burned  or  buried. 

Regarded  from  the  artist's  point  of  view, 
our  attractive  cemeteries,  notwithstanding 
their  picturesque  effects,  present  strange 
inconsistencies ;  while  our  climate  prevents 
a  display  of  the  finest  and  most  delicate 
art,  and,  in  fact,  renders  them  for  almost 
six  months  of  the  year  unfit  to  be  visited. 
The  magnificent  and  ponderous  mausoleum 
within  which  the  Roman  or  the  Greek 
would  have  deposited,  secure  from  moles- 
tation, the  cinerary  urns  of  his  ancestors, 
is  planted  by  us  directly  above  some  la- 
mented progenitor,  as  if  to  deprive  him  of 
the  privilege  of  the  resurrection.  On 
every  hand  marble  urns  destitute  of  ashes 
crown  lofty  columns,  and  inverted  torches, 
typical  of  cremation,  meet  the  eye.  These 
are  the  borrowed  tokens  of  a  classic  age, 
that  in  our  modern  cemeteries  lose  their 
ancient  meaning,  and  serve  no  obvious 
purpose.       Another    charge    that    can   be 


Earth-Burial  and  Cremation.       1 1  7 

brougJit  against  cemeteries,  is  tbe  expendi- 
ture in  tliem  annually  of  enormous  sums 
of  money,  sums  entirely  disproportionate 
to  tlie  services  they  yield.  In  an  address 
to  tlie  Chicago  Medical  Society,  in  advo- 
cacy of  cremation,  Dr.  Charles  W.  Purdy 
made  some  striking  comparisons  to  show 
what  a  burden  is  laid  upon  society  by  the 
burial  of  the  dead.  Accordins;  to  his  care- 
fully  prepared  estimate,  ''  one  and  one 
fourth  times  more  money  is  expended 
annually  in  funerals  in  the  United  States 
than  the  Government  expends  for  public 
school  purposes.  Funerals  cost  this  coun- 
try in  1880  enough  money  to  pay  the 
liabilities  of  all  the  commercial  failures  in 
the  United  States  durins:  the  same  year, 
and  give  each  bankrupt  a  capital  of  eight 
thousand  six  hundred  and  thirty  dollars 
with  which  to  resume  business.  Funerals 
cost  annually  more  money  than  the  value 
of  the  combined  gold  and  silver  yield  of 
the  United  States  in  the  year  1880." 
These  figures,  incredible  as  they  appear, 
do  not  include  the  enormous  sums  invested 
in  burial-grounds  and  expended  in  tombs 


Ii8      Earth' Burial  and  Crematio^i. 

and  monuments,  nor  tlie  loss  from  depre- 
ciation of  property  in  tlie  vicinity  of  ceme- 
teries. 

As  a  return  for  this  unparalleled  and 
ridiculous  extravagance,  we  liave  the  fu- 
neral, the  most  doleful  and  melancholy  func- 
tion on  earth,  and  the  ordinary  graveyard, 
transitory  and  repulsive  in  its  nature,  and 
deadly  in  its  effect.  When,  in  addition  to 
these  facts,  we  remember  that,  notwith- 
standing the  vast  sums  expended,  each 
semblance  of  poor  humanity  has  been 
screwed  up  in  a  box  for  a  decay  as  odious 
as  it  is  needless,  we  find  it  easy  to  agree 
with  the  author  of  GocPs  Acre  Beautiful 
who  declared  the  burial  system  in  vogue 
to  be  ^'the  most  impudent  of  the  ghouls 
that  haunt  the  path  of  progress." 

The  money  lavished  by  the  citizens  of 
New  York  during  the  past  ten  years  on 
funerals  and  cemeteries  would  have  sup- 
plied a  temple  for  the  ashes  of  the  dead  in 
every  way  worthy  of  the  metropolis.  Added 
to  and  embellished  by  coming  generations, 
its  halls  of  statuary  would  foster  art  and 
rob  Death  of  half  his  terror.     There,  cin- 


Earth-Burial  and  Cremation,       119 

erary  urns  of  every  design  and  every  de- 
gree of  elegance  could  be  placed,  safe  from 
all  desecration.  Money  expended  npon 
tliem  would  be  better  employed  than  by 
being  spent  on  coffins,  which,  within  a  few 
hours,  are  buried  forever  from  sight ;  while, 
from  a  sentimental  point  of  view,  it  would 
appear  less  incongruous  to  dress  with  roses 
a  beautiful  bronze  or  silver  vase  contain- 
ing the  ashes  of  a  friend,  than  to  tie  a 
wreath  of  immortelles  to  the  door-knob  of 
a,  gloomy  vault. 

Another  subject  well  merits  attention 
tere — the  manner  of  conducting;  funerals. 
A  funeral  would  seem  to  be  essentially  a 
family  matter,  and  because  of  the  circum- 
stances surrounding  it,  simplicity  and  pri- 
vacy should  prevail.  In  the  hour  of  bereave- 
ment when  the  grief-stricken  family  are  to 
part  with  their  dead,  how  heartless  and 
how  senseless  is  that  custom  which  necessi- 
tates public  obsequies  or  calls  for  any  dis- 
play. It  is  heartless,  because  it  adds  to  the 
grief  of  the  mourners.  Then,  if  never  before, 
they  seek  to  avoid  publicity,  for  the  side- 
long glance  of  curiosity  at  such  time  is  not 


1 20      Earth-Burial  and  CreTnation. 

pleasant  to  meet.  It  is  senseless,  because  it 
serves  no  worthy  purpose.  Flattery  cannot 
soothe  the  ear  of  death,  and  a  funeral  con- 
ducted in  public  with  all  the  pomp  that 
wealth  and  vanity  can  devise,  adds  nothing 
to  the  esteem  in  which  one's  memory  is 
held.  One  kindly  act  in  life  outlasts  it  all. 
Sincere  grief  is  retiring,  and  is  not  to  be 
comforted  by  show.  It  is  a  good  omen 
therefore  for  decency  and  public  policy  that 
people  of  refinement  are  already  beginning 
to  set  an  example  in  this  respect.  We  all 
know  that  vulgar  ostentation  at  funerals  in 
the  past  has  had  upon  the  poor  a  most  per- 
nicious effect.  Too  often  in  such  cases 
when  death  ends  a  protracted  illness  with 
all  its  attendant  and  unavoidable  expense, 
at  the  very  hour  when  economy  should 
commence,  extravagance  unfortunately  be- 
gins. Who  has  not  seen  enough  money  spent 
on  carriages  and  "  floral  emblems  "  to  sup- 
port the  dead  man's  helpless  children  many 
months  ?  Who  has  not  known  of  families 
being  deprived  of  necessities  because  of 
these  follies,  and  the  bills  in  the  end  paid 
by  means  of  a  subscription  paper  ?     Watch 


Earth-Burial  and  Cremation.      121 

certain  funerals  as  they  pass  you  daily  in 
the  streets.  You  will  see  grown  men  in 
the  carriages  laughing  and  smoking  cigars, 
and  children  eating  cake.  In  Heaven's 
name  where,  in  such  an  exhibition,  can  you 
find  the  element  of  respect  ?  Unfortunately, 
those  who  encourage  this  foolishness  are  not 
the  ones  to  suffer  from  it. 

Our  funeral  customs  need  reforming,  for 
some  of  them  seem  barbarous :  they  arm 
with  new  terrors,  death.  Taking  a  dead 
person  from  his  home  to  a  church,  and  ex- 
posing him  there  to  the  public  gaze,  appears 
to  us  unnecessary  and  in  bad  taste.  Famili- 
arity with  the  sight  does  not  reconcile  us 
to  it.  It  is  cruel  to  the  mourners.  They 
sit  in  the  front  pews  with  stricken  hearts, 
the  martyrs  to  unfeeling  custom.  They  hear 
the  doleful  hymns,  and  the  long  prayers  and 
sermons,  with  their  platitudes  on  resigna- 
tion /  all  useless  in  such  an  hour.  A  state 
of  subdued  excitement  exists  ;  the  very  air 
is  oppressive.  Persons  barely  acquainted 
with  the  deceased  in  life  feel  privileged  to 
be  present.  They  pass  conflicting  com- 
ments on  the  appearance  of  the  corpse,  or 


122      Earth' Burial  and  Cremation, 

watch,  with  morbid  curiosity  the  last  acts  at 
the  open  grave.  Cremation  presents  no  heart- 
rending scene  like  this.  Who  having  heard 
it  can  forget  tlie  liarsh  grating  of  tlie  ropes 
as  they  are  drawn  from  under  the  coffin ;  or 
the  thud  of  the  eartli  as  it  is  shoveled  down 
upon  the  lid.  And  thus  the  buried  form 
is  abandoned  to  its  fate,  and  a  harrowing 
and  uncalled  for  public  spectacle  comes  to 
an  end.  Truly  human  ingenuity  has  woven 
a  tissue  of  horrors  to  be  dropped  as  a  cur- 
tain at  the  close  of  a  human  life.  Death  in 
itself  is  solemn  and  impressive,  but  it  gains 
nothing  in  impressiveness  by  a  ceremony 
like  this. 

Let  us  hope  that  the  day  is  not  distant 
when  our  funerals  will  be  conducted  more 
privately  than  at  present,  and  be  free  from 
all  inconsistencies.  The  social  amenities  of 
life  require  us  in  daily  intercourse  Avith  our 
friends  outwardly  to  respect  their  views 
although  we  may  not  accept  them.  May 
love  and  fidelity  strengthen  that  respect 
when  their  eyes  are  closed  and  their  voices 
are  silent. 

We  should  have  no  services  over  them 


Earth-Burial  and  Crematio7i.       i  2  3 

that  they  did  not  approve  of  ivMle  living ; 
nor  should  we  dispose  of  their  bodies  in  a 
manner  that  violates  their  requests.  The 
most  sincere  tribute  to  the  memory  of  our 
dead  consists  in  obedience  to  their  wishes. 
And  if  any  particular  funeral  service  con- 
flicting: with  the  deceased  one^s  views 
would  afford  consolation  to  the  mourners, 
€ould  they  not  with  propriety  deny  them- 
selves such  comfort  until  after  the  body  is 
removed  to  its  last  destination  ? 

Fidelity  in  death  is  the  strongest  evi- 
dence of  affection,  and  instances  of  it  in 
any  age  command  the  deepest  respect. 
"When  pursued  by  adversity,  the  great 
Pompey  fled  from  Pharsalus  to  Egypt ;  he 
was  basely  betrayed  and  assassinated  and 
Ms  headless  body  left  upon  the  sea-shore. 
A  faithful  freedman  who  had  clung  to  him 
through  all  adversities  alone  remained  to 
mourn.  Grathering  a  quantity  of  wood,  he 
burned  the  remains  and  carefully  collected 
the  ashes.  And  thus  from  the  hands  of  a 
single  humble  friend  the  once  mighty  ruler 
of  Rome  received  the  last  tribute  of  respect 
and  love.    The  sincerity  of  affection  prompt- 


1 24     Earth-Burial  and  Cremation. 

ing  this  pious  act  touclies  our  generous 
feelings,  and  as  an  example  of  simple  de- 
votion, steadfast  in  misfortune  and  death, 
it  arouses  our  sympathy  far  more  than 
does  the  ^'  mouth  honor,"  pomp,  and  freez- 
ing solemnity  of  the  conventional  public 
funeral. 


CHAPTER  V. 

The  Progress  of  Cremation. — Revival  of  Interest  in  the 
Subject  in  Italy  and  other  Countries  of  Europe. — Dis- 
tinguished Men  Advocating  its  Introduction. — Petition 
to  the  German  Eeichstag. — Cremation  in  Japan. — Ad- 
vance of  the  Movement  in  the  United  States. — Crema- 
tories and  Societies  in  Existence  in  Different  Cities 
of  the  Union. — Friendly  Aid  of  Medical  Associations. 
—  Legislative  Action  Favoring  the  Reform.  —  The 
Crematory  at  Quarantine  Station,  New  York.  — 
Other  EstabHshments. — Work  of  Dr.  Davis  and  Dr. 
Erichsen. — Prejudice  against  Cremation  Dispelled  by 
Witnessing  the  Process. — The  Professions  Represented 
by  those  who  have  been  Incinerated. — Bright  Pros- 
pects for  the  Future. 

As  the  evils  incidental  to  earth-burial 
will  be  abolished  when  the  system  giving 
rise  to  them  is  supplanted  by  cremation, 
the  advance  of  the  latter  reform  in  pojDular 
regard  becomes  a  matter  of  unusual  im- 
portance. Let  us  consider,  therefore,  the 
progress  that  it  has  made,  both  in  Europe 
and  in  this  country,  during  the  years  that 

125 


126      Earth-Biirial  and  Creination. 

have  elapsed  since  interest  in  the  subject 
was  re-awakened  in  Italy.  In  1869  Pro- 
fessors Coletti  and  Castiglioni,  "in  the 
name  of  public  health  and  of  civilization,"^ 
introduced  in  the  Medical  International 
Congress  at  Florence  the  question  of  cre- 
mation. At  that  time  not  a  single  crema- 
tory had  as  yet  been  built  either  in  Europe 
or  America.  A  resolution  was  passed  at 
this  Congress  urging  that  every  possible 
means  be  employed  to  promote  the  substi- 
tution of  incineration  for  burial ;  and,  three 
years  later,  the  Royal  Institute  of  Science 
and  Letters  of  Lombardy,  offered  a  prize 
for  the  best  practical  method.  From  this 
time  forward  interest  in  the  movement 
steadily  increased,  and  cremation  found  in- 
defatigable champions  among  some  of  the 
most  learned  professors  and  physicians  of 
Italy.  The  work  of  Dr.  Gsetano  Pini 
and  Professors  Coletti  and  Castiglioni  in 
that  country  was  ably  seconded  by  the 
efforts  of  Sir  Henry  Thompson,  Sir  T. 
Spencer  Wells,  and  the  late  Mr.  William 
Eassie  in  England.  Sir  Henry  Thompson 
was  President  of  "The  Cremation  Society 


Earth- Burial  and  Cremation,       127 

of  England,"  founded  in  January,  1874  ;  and 
two  articles  by  him  relating  to  the  treat- 
ment of  the  body  after  death,  and  strongly 
advocating  the  adoption  of  cremation,  ap- 
peared in  the  Contemporary  Review  for 
January  and  March  of  that  year,  and  at- 
tracted unusual  attention  throughout  Eng- 
land and  in  this  country.  Mr.  William 
Eassie,  the  eminent  sanitary  engineer,  was. 
Secretary  of  this  Society,  and  in  December, 
1874,  published  a  book  entitled  Cremation 
of  the  Dead ;  Its  History  and  Bearings 
upon  Public  Health.  This  masterly  work 
gained  great  celebrity,  and  will  always. 
remain  a  standard  authority  upon  the^ 
subject. 

In  August,  1880,  Sir  T.  Spencer  Wells 
read  an  able  paper,  advocating  cremation, 
before  the  British  Medical  Association  at 
Cambridge  ;  and  a  memorial  indorsing  the 
adoption  of  incineration  was  subsequently 
drawn  up  and  signed  by  over  a  hundred 
prominent  physicians  and  surgeons,  mem- 
bers of  the  Association.  It  was  addressed 
and  forwarded  to  the  Home  Secretary,  and 
stated  that  the  signers  were  opposed  to  tha 


128      Earth' Burial  and  Creinatio7i. 

existing  custom  of  burying  the  dead,  and 
desired  to  substitute  in  place  of  it  crema- 
tion. As  the  latter  practice  was  not 
illegal,  they  trusted  that  the  government 
would  interpose  no  obstacles  to  its  intro- 
duction. While  the  advocates  of  cremation 
were  thus  employed  in  England,  in  our 
own  country  Dr.  F.  Julius  LeMoyne,  Prof. 
Samuel  D.  Gross,  and  other  physicians  were 
ably  and  earnestly  laboring  to  promote  the 
reform  here.  The  result  of  these  and  other 
efforts,  made  at  the  same  time  in  Germany, 
France,  Switzerland,  and  Denmark  was 
quickly  felt,  and  by  1876  the  merits  of  the 
question  were  under  discussion  in  nearly 
every  country  of  the  civilized  world. 

But  periods  of  long  and  earnest  weighing 
of  the  opposing  opinions  invariably  23recede 
any  innovations  upon  old  customs,  and 
cremation  furnished  no  exception  to  the 
rule.  As  late  as  1881,  only  eleven  years 
ago,  Euro^De  and  America  together  pos- 
sessed but  ^YQ  crematories.  Of  these,  two 
were  in  Italy,  at  Milan  and  at  Lodi,  and 
were  erected  in  1874  and  in  1876.  A  third 
was  at  Washington,  Pa.     It  was  built  by 


Earth' Burial  and  Cremation.       129 

Dr.  F.  Julius  LeMoyne,  and  the  first  in- 
cineration performed  there  was  that  of  the 
Baron  de  Palm,  in  December,  1876.  A 
fourth  crematory  was  at  Gotha,  Germany. 
It  was  built  by  the  Municipal  Council  of 
that  city,  and  was  opened  to  the  public  in 
ISTovember,  1878.  The  fifth  was  at  Woking, 
Surrey,  England.  This  crematory  was  built 
in  1879  ;  in  it  the  system  invented  by  Pro- 
fessor Grorini,  of  Italy,  was  adopted.  It 
took  six  years,  however,  in  England  to  dis- 
cover that  there  was  no  law,  ancient  or 
modern,  forbidding  the  practice  of  crema- 
tion, provided  it  be  done  so  as  to  cause  no 
nuisance.  As  a  result  of  this  delay  no 
incineration  took  place  at  Woking  before 
March  26,  1885.  The  first  four  cremato- 
ries, however,  had,  by  1881,  presented  to 
the  world  over  two  hundred  successful  and 
practical  tests  of  incineration,  and  public 
interest  in  the  movement  had  become  wide- 
spread. In  nearly  all  the  great  cities  of 
our  own  country  and  of  Europe,  cremation 
societies  had  been  thoroughly  organized, 
and  to-day  their  membership  rolls  contain 
in  the  aggregate  the  names  of  thousands  of 


1 30      Earth- Burial  and  Cremation, 

persons.  Distinguisliecl  scientists  and  phy- 
sicians in  every  country  heartily  indorsed 
the  movement,  and  men  illustrious  in  other 
walks  of  life  added  their  support.  In  Den- 
mark, Bishop  Mourad,  who,  during  the  war 
with  Prussia,  led  the  affairs  of  the  nation 
as  prime-minister,  publicly  declared  him- 
self in  favor  of  a  law  that  would  compel 
the  substitution  of  cremation  for  earth- 
burial.  Lord  Beaconsfield,  in  considering 
earth-burial,  wrote  :  "  What  is  called  Grod's 
acre  is  really  not  adapted  to  the  country 
which  we  inhabit,  the  times  in  which  we 
live,  and  the  spirit  of  the  age."  Gam- 
betta  was  a  member  of  the  French  Crema- 
tion Society,  and  General  Garibaldi  in  his 
will  explicitly  directed  that  his  body  should 
be  burned,  and  that  the  urn  containing  his 
ashes  should  be  placed  under  the  orange 
tree  shading  the  tombs  of  his  two  little 
girls. 

Under  such  favorable  auspices  it  is  not 
surprising  that  during  the  last  ten  years 
cremation  has  advanced  with  rapid  strides. 
In  1888  it  was  stated,  at  a  Congress  of 
Cremation  Societies  in  Vienna,  that  there 


Earth-Burial  and  Cremation,      131 

were  fifty  crematories  in  tlie  world.  Of 
these,  twenty  were  located  in  tlie  cities  and 
towns  of  Italy,  and  the  rest  were  scattered 
throughout  the  United  States  and  in  dif- 
ferent countries  of  Europe.  Lodi,  Cremona, 
Brescia,  Padua,  Milan,  Yarese,  Florence, 
Venice,  Rome,  London,  Paris,  Copenhagen, 
Stockholm,  Gothenburg,  Gotha,  Dresden, 
and  Brussels  were  some  of  the  cities  of 
Europe  that  in  1888  possessed  crematories, 
while  almost  every  town  of  any  import- 
ance had  already  organized  a  cremation 
society.  During  the  ten  years  following 
the  revival  of  cremation  in  Italy,  from 
April,  1876,  to  December  31,  1886,  787 
incinerations  took  place  in  that  country 
alone,  and  the  crematory  at  Gotha,  eight 
years  after  being  built,  had  incinerated  over 
^Y%  hundred  bodies. 

As  cremation  societies  were  multiplied 
in  Germany,  Prince  Bismarck  declared  that 
he  had  no  objection  to  the  enactment  of  a 
general  law  regulating  and  permitting  the 
practice  of  cremation  throughout  the  entire 
empire ;  removing  thereby  the  restriction 
that  had  previously  confined  the  right  to 


132      Earth' Burial  and  Cremation. 

Gotha.  Encouraged  by  this  token  of  offi- 
cial favor,  toward  the  close  of  the  year 
1885  the  friends  of  cremation  laid  before 
the  Reichstag  a  petition,  containing  23,365 
signatures,  earnestly  requesting  that  the 
practice  of  incineration  be  allowed  in  all 
the  cities  of  Grermany.  The  following  ac- 
count of  the  professions  of  the  subscribers 
shows  in  what  quarters  cremation  found 
most  favor :  The  list  was  signed  by  1,942 
physicians ;  1,046  lawyers  and  professors  ; 
849  school  teachers  ;  1,015  government  offi- 
cers ;  10  Protestant  clergymen;  3  rabbis; 
361  women  ;  and  6,000  workingmen ;  the 
remaining  number  being  made  up  of 
merchants,  manufacturers,  tradesmen,  and 
others.  The  Berlin  Society  now  has  over 
a  thousand  members,  and  the  chief  publi- 
cation in  the  interest  of  cremation.  Die 
FlamTne,  is  issued  monthly  in  that  city. 
The  December  number  of  1891  completed 
a  list  of  2,188  incinerations  that  had  taken 
place  in  different  parts  of  the  world,  and 
accounts  of  which  had  been  forwarded 
for  publication.  The  list  necessarily  is 
far   from   complete,    as    many    cremations 


E arth- Burial  and  Cremaiion,       133 

take  place  tliat  are  never  announced  to 
the  Berlin  journal. 

The  Cremation  Society  of  France,  founded 
in  1880,  has  a  membership  of  about  six 
hundred  persons.  In  1886  the  Municipal 
Council  of  Paris  suggested  to  the  Prefect 
of  Police  that  the  remains  of  some  four 
thousand  persons  annually  dissected  in  the 
hospitals  should  be  cremated,  in  order  to 
relieve  the  overcrowded  cemeteries  and 
for  the  sake  of  economy.  The  suggestion 
was  approved  of,  and  the  Prefect  of  the 
Seine  decided  that  the  crematory  should 
be  erected  in  the  cemetery  of  Pere  la 
Chaise.  This  has  been  done,  and  the 
building,  a  handsome  and  commodious  one, 
is  now  open  for  public  use.  It  cost,  with 
its  two  furnaces,  about  $50,000 ;  and,  as 
already  stated,  one  of  these  is  a  Gorini,  the 
other,  a  regenerating  furnace.  Together, 
they  are  estimated  to  be  able  to  cremate 
five  thousand  bodies  annually.  The  first 
incineration  took  place  on  the  2 2d  of  Octo- 
ber, 1887,  and  since  then  nearly  four  thou- 
sand bodies  have  been  consumed. 

In  Portugal,  organized  and  violent  oppo- 


134      Earth- Burial  and  Cremation. 

sition  was  shown  on  the  part  of  the  clergy 
to  the  introduction  of  incineration ;  but 
the  teachings  of  science  prevailed  in  the 
end,  as  they  generally  do,  and  to-day  the 
use  of  cremation  is  not  only  optional 
throuo-hout  the  kinoxloni,  but  the  author- 
ities  of  Lisbon  have  decreed  that  it  shall 
be  compulsory  in  time  of  epidemics.  In 
1885,  it  might  be  added,  the  Italian  gov- 
ernment built  a  crematory  for  the  cholera 
hospital  at  Yarignano.  The  Swiss  Society 
at  Zurich  has  a  membership  of  400,  and 
the  Society  of  Holland,  with  branch  socie- 
ties in  ten  different  parts  of  the  kingdom, 
numbers  1,500  members.  The  Brussels 
Society,  founded  in  1882,  counts  over  600 
members;  while  the  Danish  Society  at 
Copenhagen,  organized  in  1881,  has  over 
1,800  members,  of  whom  120  are  physicians. 
Cremation  has  likewise  made  great  prog- 
ress in  Japan.  In  Tokio  alone  there  are 
six  crematories  open  to  the  public,  and 
about  10,000  bodies  a  year  are  burnt  in 
that  city.  Most  of  the  crematories  through- 
out the  country  are  owned  by  stock  com- 
panies, though  some  wealthy  families  have 


Earth  -  Burial  and  Cremation .      135 

private  ones.  It  is  estimated  that  about 
forty-seven  per  cent,  of  all  the  dead  in 
Japan  are  incinerated. 

Let  us  turn  now  to  the  condition  of  cre- 
mation in  the  United  States,  and  see  if  it 
offers  encouragement  to  its  advocates.  Be- 
tween 1881  and  1885  a  number  of  crema- 
tion societies  were  organized  in  different 
cities  of  the  United  States,  and  many  lec- 
tures were  delivered,  and  pamphlets  and 
articles  published  advocating  the  reform. 
Efforts  made  during  preceding  years  to 
attract  attention  to  the  work  had  met  with 
but  little  success,  and  it  was  only  during 
the  years  above  specified  that  a  general  pop- 
ular interest  became  manifest.  The  work 
done  by  the  different  societies  during  these 
years  was  almost  entirely  educational.  The 
object  of  all  of  them  was  about  the  same. 
As  expressed  in  the  by-laws  of  the  New 
York  Cremation  Society,  it  was  "to  dis- 
seminate sound  and  enlightened  views 
respecting  the  incineration  of  the  dead ;  to 
advocate  and  promote,  in  every  proper  and 
legitimate  way,  the  substitution  of  this 
method   for   burial ;    and  to   advance  the 


136      Earth- Burial  and  Cremation, 

public  good  bj  affording  facilities  for  car- 
rying cremation  into  operation."  The 
steady,  unobtrusive  work  of  these  societies 
was  destined  ultimately  to  produce  good 
results,  although  as  late  as  the  spring  of 
1884,  only  eight  years  ago,  tliere  was  but 
one  crematory  in  the  entire  country.  This 
is  an  important  fact  in  view  of  what  fol- 
lows, and  should  not  be  forgotten.  The 
crematory  in  question  was  that  erected  by 
Dr.  F.  Julius  LeMoyne  at  Washington, 
Pa.,  and  first  used,  as  already  stated,  at  the 
incineration  of  the  Baron  de  Palm  in  De- 
cember, 1876. 

Within  two  years  after  it  was  opened 
over  sixty  applications  for  prospective  cre- 
mations were  made,  but  declined,  for  the 
reason  that  the  crematory  was  built  for 
private  use,  and  not  for  the  purpose  of 
continuing  a  regular  business.  An  occa- 
sional cremation  was  permitted,  only  witli 
the  object  of  keeping  the  subject  before 
tke  public  e3^e.  After  tkirty-eight  or  forty 
incinerations  had  taken  place,  the  building 
on  the  1st  of  August,  1884,  was  closed  to 
the  general  public. 


Earth- Burial  and  Crematioji.       137 

On  November  25,  1884,  the  second 
crematory  ever  built  in  tliis  country  was 
opened  at  Lancaster,  Pa.  It  was  erected 
by  a  number  of  public-spirited  citizens  of 
the  place,  and  the  furnaces  were  designed 
and  built  by  Dr.  M.  L.  Davis,  of  Lancas- 
ter, a  gentleman  whose  untiring  energy  in 
promoting  the  advance  of  the  reform  has- 
caused  his  name  to  be  known  and  respected 
in  every  cremation  society  throughout  the 
land.  Early  in  December,  1885,  the  beau- 
tiful Buffalo  crematory,  and  the  crematory 
of  the  United  States  Cremation  Co.,  located 
at  Fresh  Pond,  Long  Island,  had  their  first 
incinerations.  From  this  time  forward  the 
movement  showed  steady  progression,  and 
new  crematories  were  opened  eveiy  year. 
In  1888  there  were  eleven  crematories  in 
the  country  ;  and  this  number  at  the  open- 
ing of  1891  had  increased  to  seventeen. 
Fifteen  out  of  the  seventeen  have  been 
built  during  the  last  six  years.  They  are 
located  in  the  following  places,  the  list 
being  given  in  the  order  in  which  the 
buildings  were  opened  :  Washington,  Pa. ; 
Lancaster,  Pa. ;  Buffalo,  N.  Y. ;  Fresh  Pond^ 


138      Earth- Burial  and  Cremation. 

Xong  Island ;  Pittsburg,  Pa. ;  Med.  Dep't, 
University  of  Pennsylvania;  Los  Angeles, 
Cal. ;  Cincinnati,  O. ;  Detroit,  Mich. ;  St. 
Louis,  Mo. ;  Grermantown,  Pa. ;  Quarantine 
Station,  N.  Y. ;  Baltimore,  Md. ;  Troy,  KY. ; 
Philadelphia,  Pa.  (City  Burial  Ground) ; 
Atlanta,  Ga. ;  Davenport,  la.  The  re- 
ports made  by  the  officers  of  these  several 
crematories  show  that  the  remains  of 
about  2,200  persons  in  all  had  been  incin- 
erated by  the  beginning  of  May,  1891. 
This  vre  consider  a  remarkably  good  show- 
ing for  a  country  that  had  but  one  crema- 
tory within  its  borders  only  seven  years 
before.  Other  crematories  are  about  to  be 
erected  in  Boston,  Mass. ;  Chicago,  111. ;  San 
Antonio,  Tex.;  and  at  Des  Moines,  la. 
During  the  past  ten  years  as  many  as 
tw^enty-two  cremation  societies  were  organ- 
ized and  are  now  in  existence  in  different 
cities  of  this  country.  In  their  efforts  to 
popularize  and  extend  the  reform  they  have 
iDeen  encouraged  by  the  friendly  aid  of 
medical  associations,  and  at  times  benefited 
by  legislative  action.  In  September,  1883, 
the   Grand  Jury  of  New  Orleans  recom- 


Earth- Burial  and  Crematiofi.      139 

mended  that,  on  sanitary  grounds,  a  crema- 
tory should  be  established  in  that  city,  for 
burning  the  bodies  of  those  who  die  of 
contagious  diseases.  In  May,  1885,  the 
Legislature  of  Massachusetts  passed  an  act 
authorizing  the  formation  of  corporations 
for  the  purpose  of  cremating  the  bodies  of 
the  dead. 

In  June,  1886,  a  committee  on  cremation 
appointed  by  the  "  Society  of  Medical 
Jurisprudence  and  State  Medicine "  of 
New  York  City,  made  a  report  recommend- 
ing in  strong  language  this  method  of  dis- 
posing of  the  dead.  It  declared  cremation 
to  be  a  sanitary  necessity,  and  advised  its 
acceptance  by  all.  Accompanying  the  re- 
port was  a  resolution  recommending  the 
passage  of  a  bill  by  the  Legislature  that 
would  require  all  persons  who  die  of  con- 
tagious diseases,  like  small-pox,  cholera,  and 
yellow- fever,  to  be  cremated  under  the  di- 
rection of  the  municipal  authorities.  The 
bill  was  to  provide  also  for  the  cremation 
of  the  bodies  of  paupers,  and  persons  of 
unknown  identity.  Public  crematories 
were  deemed  advisable  and  recommended. 


140      Earth- Burial  and  Cremation, 

Of  all  the  physicians  present  at  the  time 
of  the  submission  of  this  report,  only  two 
expressed  opinions  unfavorable  to  it.  New 
York  was  the  first  State  to  order  by  Legis- 
lative action,  the  erection  of  a  crematory, 
and  to  set  apart  money  for  that  purpose. 
The  Legislature  of  1888  appropriated 
$20,000  for  the  building  and  equipping  of 
a  crematory  on  Swinburne  Island  for  the 
use  of  the  Commissioners  of  Quarantine, 
and  for  the  removal  and  disposition  of  the 
bodies  formerly  buried  at  Seguine's  Point, 
the  burying-ground  of  the  establishment. 
The  crematory  was  built  in  1888  by  Dr.  M. 
L.  Davis  of  Lancaster,  Pa.,  at  a  cost  of 
$5,500.  A  mortuary  was  also  erected  on  the 
Island,  with  a  capacity  for  thirty- two 
bodies,  to  receive  temporarily  the  remains 
of  those  who  die  at  the  Quarantine  hospital, 
or  whose  relis^ious  views  as  communicated 
by  them  while  living,  or  by  their  friends 
within  twenty-four  hours  after  their  decease, 
are  opposed  to  cremation.  The  section  of  the 
act  directing  the  removal  of  the  dead  from 
Quarantine  cemetery  (Seguine's  Point)i 
provided  that  the  bodies  should  be  "  dis 


Earth  -  Burial  and  Cremation .      141 

posed  of  in  sucli  manner  as  will  not  endan- 
ger the  public  liealth."  In  conformity  with 
this  order  the  remains  of  nearly  three  hun- 
dred persons  were  disinterred  and  incin- 
erated at  the  crematory,  and  the  ashes 
collected  and  deposited  in  the  mortuary 
already  mentioned.  During  1889  and  1890 
the  bodies  of  eight  persons  who  died  at 
the  Quarantine  hospital  were  also  incin- 
erated. The  establishment  of  this  crematory, 
we  are  informed,  gives  great  satisfaction  to 
the  Health  Officers,  and  successfully  solves 
a  problem  that  presented  at  times  in  the 
past  serious  difficulties. 

In  1886  the  University  of  Pennsylvania 
erected  a  crematory  for  the  incineration  of 
the  remains  of  those  dissected  in  the  Med- 
ical Department  of  the  University  ;  and  in 
1890,  by  the  municipal  authorities  of  Phila- 
delphia, a  crematory  was  erected  on  the 
public  burial-ground  of  that  city.  Both  of 
these  crematories  were  built  by  Dr.  M.  L. 
Davis;  and  it  may  be  mentioned  in  this 
connection  that  nine  crematories  in  differ- 
ent States  have  had  their  furnaces  built 
under  the  direct  superintendence  and  ac- 


142      Earth- Burial  and  Cremation. 

cording  to  the  plans  designed  by  this  phy- 
sician. 

He  also  founded  The  Modern  Crematist 
at  Lancaster,  a  monthly  journal  published 
in  the  interest  of  the  reform,  and  giving  an 
account  of  its  progress,  both  in  this  country 
and  in  Europe.  The  devotion  of  this 
physician  to  the  cause  is  typical  of  the  at- 
titude of  the  entire  medical  profession.  In 
our  own  country,  the  four  physicians  most 
prominently  identified  with  the  work  were 
Dr.  LeMoyne,  Prof.  Gross,  Dr.  Davis,  and 
Dr.  Hugo  Erichsen.  The  last  gentleman 
was  a  regular  contributor  to  The  Ore- 
matist,  and  in  1887  he  published  a  valuable 
book  of  over  two  hundred  and  fifty  pages 
on  the  "  Cremation  of  the  Dead."  It  was 
largely  as  a  result  of  his  personal  efforts 
that  in  1887  a  crematory  was  built  in 
Detroit,  his  place  of  residence.  To  both 
Dr.  Davis  and  Dr.  Erichsen  we  would 
cheerfully  acknowledge  our  indebtedness, 
for  their  writings  have  furnished  us  with 
many  valuable  and  important  facts  relating 
to  our  subject. 

Some  of  the  crematories  that  we  have 


Earth- Burial  and  Cremation.       1 45. 

mentioned  are  richly  decorated,  and  possess 
architectural  beauties  worthy  of  notice. 
The  one  at  Buffalo  is  built  of  dark-brown 
sandstone :  it  is  a  substantial  structure, 
and  with  its  square  tower  and  steep  slant- 
ing roof  resembles  some  of  the  chapels 
built  in  the  north  of  England  centuries 
ago.  The  building  is  covered  with  ivy, 
and  surrounded  by  sloping  lawns.  The 
interior  resembles  a  chapel,  and  the  chan- 
cel and  nave  are  beautifully  decorated  in 
early  Italian  style.  It  has  windows  of 
richly  stained  glass,  and  some  twenty  dif- 
ferent symbols  and  devices  are  interwoven 
in  arches  of  green  and  blue.  All  the  sur- 
roundings combine  to  show  both  respect 
for  the  dead  and  respect  for  the  feelings' 
of  the  living. 

The  crematory  in  Oakwood  Cemetery, 
Troy,  I^.  Y.,  was  completed  in  November, 
1889,  and  is  one  of  the  finest  buildings  of 
its  kind  in  the  world.  It  is  an  imposing 
and  costly  structure,  built  of  Westerly 
granite,  in  Romanesque  style,  and  was 
erected  by  Mr.  and  Mrs.  William  S.  Earl 
as  a  memorial  to  their  son,  the  late  Gardi- 


T44      Earth- Burial  and  Cremation, 

iier  Earl.  The  building  is  136  feet  long, 
70  feet  wide,  and  has  a  tower  90  feet 
in  height.  Wealth  and  affection  com- 
bined have  succeeded  in  making  this  cre- 
matory a  model  for  future  societies  to 
study.  After  personally  examining  the 
different  systems  of  incineration  in  use, 
Mr.  Earl  decided  that  the  Venini  method 
was  the  one  best  adapted  for  the  pur- 
pose, and  it  was  accordingly  introduced 
in  the  memorial  crematory.  This  is  the 
system  of  incineration  employed  at  the 
Buffalo  Crematory  (New  York),  the  one  at 
Milan,  and  other  leading  establishments  of 
Italy.  The  temple  of  the  Philadelphia 
Cremation  Society  is  another  beautiful 
structure,  erected  on  the  grounds  of  the 
Chelten  Hills  Cemetery  at  Germantown. 
It  contains  a  chapel  with  a  seating  ca- 
pacity of  three  hundred  persons,  and  also 
an  extensive  columbarium,  with  niches  for 
receiving  the  urns  that  preserve  the  ashes 
of  the  dead. 

We  may  aj)propriately  refer  to  the  effect 
produced  on  persons  when  they  first  wit- 
ness an  incineration,   for  the  impressions 


Earth- Burial  and  Cremation.      145 

made  at  sucli  a  time  influence  tlie  growth 
of  tlie  reform.  While  the  writer  was  in 
correspondence  with  officers  of  different 
societies,  during  the  preparation  of  this 
volume,  no  information  was  more  welcome 
or  encouraging  than  that  so  frequently 
received,  of  persons  coming  to  witness 
incinerations  with  aversion  and  prejudice 
and  subsequently  going  away  well  pleased. 
It  conforms  with  our  personal  experience 
at  the  Fresh  Pond  Crematory  on  Long 
Island,  where  hardly  an  incineration  took 
place  without  some  one  voluntarily  con- 
fessing that,  having  witnessed  the  process, 
a  previous  unfavorable  opinion  regarding 
it  was  dispelled.  A¥e  know  of  many 
incinerations  that  have  occurred  as  a  direct 
result  of  the  satisfaction  afforded  by  other 
incinerations  preceding  them.  A  steady, 
natural  growth  from  such  a  cause  is  in  the 
highest  degree  satisfactory.  It  clearly 
indicates  that  the  process  is  approved  of, 
and  that  its  popularity  is  destined  to  in- 
crease and  be  lasting.  At  the  Fresh  Pond 
Crematory  incinerations  are  always  as  pri- 
vate as  the  relatives  of  the  deceased  may 


146      Earth- Burial  and  Cremation, 

desire.  The  audience  room  belonors  to  them 
for  the  time  being,  and  their  wishes  as  re- 
gards the  exclusion  or  admission  of  visitors 
are  strictly  observed.  When  they  do  not 
require  strict  privacy,  orderly  persons  are 
allowed  to  be  j3resent ;  and  when  incinera- 
tions are  not  in  progress  visitors  are  always, 
admitted,  and  the  method  employed  thor- 
oughly and  patiently  explained.  This 
course  of  procedure  tends  to  make  friends- 
for  the  cause.  It  is,  we  believe,  a  good 
rule  for  all  crematories  to  follow;  for  a. 
natural  and  praiseworthy  interest  is  felt  in 
new  inventions,  and  we  are  apt  to  distrust 
them  when  they  are  veiled  in  mystery,  and 
their  details  are  not  free  for  us  to  exam- 
ine and  to  understand. 

From  year  to  year  all  the  crematories 
that  we  have  heard  from  show  a  steady 
and  gratifying  increase  in  the  number 
of  incinerations.  We  present  the  follow- 
ing table  showing  the  number  of  inciner- 
ations that  have  taken  place  at  the  Fresh 
Pond  Crematory  since  the  first  one,  which 
occurred  on  December  4,  1885. 


Earth- Burial  and  Cremation.      147 


Number  of  incinerations  for  December,  1885 9 


the  year    1886. 

"      1887- 

"      1888. 

''      1889. 

"      1890. 

'•      1891. 
Jan.,  Feb., 
andMch.,  1892, 


77 

67 

83 

106 

160 

187 

56 


Total  number  of  incinerations  from  December 

4, 1885,  to  April  1, 1892, 745* 

The  birthplaces  of  these  745  persons  are 
given  in  the  annexed  list : 


Germany 

United  States 

England 

Austria 

Switzerland 

France 

Ireland 

Italy 

Hungary 

Denmark 


373  Scotland 

240  Belgium 

29  HoUand 

19  India 

19  Cuba 

16  Australia 

8  West  Indies 

7  Asia  Minor 

8  Canada 

5  On  Mediterranean 


Unknown    1 . 
*  "We  give  in  the  following  table  a  comparison  of  the 
number  of  incinerations  for  the  first  five  years,  Decem- 
ber to  December,  after  the  opening  of  the  respective 
crematories  : 


"GOTHA. 

1878  to  1879 16 

1879  "  1880 17 

1880  "  1881 34 

1881  "  1882  33 

1882  "  1883 43 


NEW   YORK. 

1885  to  1886 82 

1886  "1887.. 61 

1887  "  1888 86 

1888  "  1889 108 

1889  "  1890 152" 


—From  The  Urn  of  February,  1892. 


148      Earth- Burial  and  Cremation, 
They  are  classified  as  follows  : 

Men   ....     468  Women     ...     213 

Boys       ...      40  Girls      ....       24 

On  the  roll  of  those  who  have  sought  by 
means  of  fire  to  escape  the  corruption  of 
the  grave  are  the  names  of  men  well 
known  and  honored  in  their  respective 
callings.  Many  were  representatives  of  the 
learned  professions,  and  the  influence  of 
such  examples  is  undoubted.  The  occu- 
pations of  some  ^vho  have  been  incinerated 
at  Fresh  Pond,  Long  Island,  is  shown  by 
the  following  list.  Among  the  number 
were : 

34  Merchants  6  Professors 

28  Physicians  6  Of  Dramatic  Profession 

17  Journalists  5  Druggists 

15  Brokers  4  Scientific  Engineers 

12  Artists  4  Chemists 

7  Teachers  2  Authors 
2  Clergymen. 

The  tables  given  above  show  that  a 
belief  in  cremation  is  generally  diffused,  and 
that  it  is  not  confined  to  any  one  country 
or  any  especial  calling.  When  we  remember 
that  throughout  Europe  and  America  to- 
day, the  cause  of  cremation  finds  champions 


Earth- Burial  and  Cremation.      149 

in  thousands  of  educated  men,  who  from 
character  and  position  mould  public  opinion, 
we  need  not  have  any  fear  as  to  its  future 
success.  As  Sir  T.  Spencer  Wells  said  in 
his  introduction  to  Dr.  Erichsen's  work: 
"When  the  people  know  how  great  are 
the  evils  dependent  on  burial  in  the  earth, 
even  when  this  is  done  under  the  most 
favorable  conditions,  how  seldom  these  con- 
ditions can  be  secured,  and,  when  the  knowl- 
edge becomes  general  that  when  a  human 
body  which  would  require  ^y^^  ten  or 
twenty  years  to  slowly  putrefy  in  any  soil 
can  in  one  hour  be  cheaply  and  inoffen- 
sively converted  into  a  white  ash,  public 
sentiment  must  favor  cremation  in  place  of 
corruption,  and  for  putrefaction  substitute 
purification." 

That  in  time  this  system  will  be  univer- 
sally adopted,  there  seems  no  reason  to 
doubt.  We  have  faith  in  a  good  custom 
ultimately  supplanting  a  bad  one,  and  the 
superiority  of  incineration  over  earth-burial 
is  manifest. 

When  the  merits  of  the  question  are 
thoroughly  appreciated,  we  shall  not  feel 


150      Earth-Burial  and  Cremation. 

justified  in  storing  up  disease-germs,  and  in 
poisoning  earth,  air,  and  water  by  our  pres- 
ent custom  of  burying  the  dead.  We  will 
believe  it  neither  wise  nor  decent  to  con- 
sign yearly  to  putrefaction  within  the 
neighborhood  of  New  York  and  Brooklyn 
over  60,000  dead  bodies.  A  refined  senti- 
ment will  teach  us  the  questionable  nature 
of  that  respect  which  prompts  the  erection 
of  a  costly  marble  tribute  to  the  memory 
of  a  friend,  while  his  body  is  left  to  decom- 
pose in  a  w^ater-soaked  grave  beneath  it. 

And,  touching  the  religious  aspect  of  the 
case,  if  "  religion,"  as  asserted  by  Dr.  Young^ 
"  is  the  proof  of  common  sense,"  then  "  let 
us,"  in  the  words  of  the  Rev.  Howard 
Henderson,  "  cease  to  count  the  beads  of 
our  rosary,  to  chatter  the  litanies  of  preju- 
dice, and  address  ourselves  to  the  prob- 
lems that  philanthropy  and  piety  present 
to  reason."  "  Let  science  and  sanitation," 
says  this  reverend  gentleman,  "  speak,  and 
give  sentiment  freedom.  Treat  the  subject 
fairly.  It  wall  not  down  at  the  bidding  of 
prejudice,  nor  be  whistled  down  the  wind 
by  a  sniif  of  holy  horror.     The  growth  of 


Earth- Burial  and  Cremation.      151 

population  is  forcing  the  discussion  upon 
the  thoughtful  in  all  populous  centres.  It 
is  more  a  question  of  concern  for  the  living 
and  the  lowly,  than  for  the  dead.  It  must 
not  be  studied  amid  the  verdant  shades  and 
sculptured  tombs  of  Greenwood  alone,  but 
amid  the  crowded  cemeteries  where  the 
poor  and  friendless  are  ditched  and  de- 
serted." 

Science  and  proven  facts  attest  the  wis- 
dom of  cremation,  and  in  the  words  of  the 
Royal  Institute  of  Science  and  Letters  of 
Lombardy,  we  believe  that  its  adoption  will 
mark  a  stage  of  progress  in  the  march  of 
civilization. 


APPENDIX. 

In  the  year  1889  the  officers  of  the  United 
States  Cremation  Co.  (Limited),  and  the  New- 
York:  Cremation  Society,  forwarded  to  persons 
prominent  in  their  respective  callings,  a  circular- 
letter,  asking  for  an  expression  of  their  views 
on  the  subject  of  cremation,  as  a  means  of  fur- 
thering its  introduction.  A  pamphlet  of  fifty- 
five  pages,  containing  one  hundred  replies  to 
this  letter,  was  subsequently  published  for  dis- 
tribution. 

The  answers  received,  w4th  but  three  or  four 
exceptions,  heartily  endorsed  the  reform ;  and 
from  about  one  third  of  these  letters  the  follow- 
ing extracts  are  taken. 

The  Right  Rev.  Phillips  Brooks,  P.  E.  Bishop 
of  Massachusetts,  wrote : 

''  I  believe  that  there  are  no  true  objections 
to  the  practice  of  cremation,  and  a  good  many 
excellent  reasons  why  it  should  become  com- 
mon." 

153 


1 54  Appendix, 

Charles  A.  Dana,  Editor  of  The  Sun^  New 
York  City  : 

"It  is  my  judgment  that  cremation  is  the 
most  rational  and  appropriate  manner  of  dis- 
posing of  the  dead." 

William  A.  Hammond,  M.D.,  of  the  Sanita- 
rium for  Diseases  of  the  Nervous  System, 
Washington,  D.  C. : 

"  I  have  for  many  years  past  been  heartily  in 
favor  of  the  cremation  of  the  dead.  So  far  as 
I  can  influence  the  matter  I  shall  be  cremated 
myself  at  the  proper  time." 

Prof.  Charles  Eliot  Norton,  of  Harvard  Uni- 
versity : 

"■  The  arguments  in  support  of  cremation  are 
so  strong,  and  those  against  our  present  fashion 
of  burial  are  so  conclusive,  that  I  have  little 
question  that,  when  they  are  fairly  presented  to 
intelligent  men,  the  development  of  a  senti- 
ment favorable  to  cremation  will  be  rapid,  and 
the  adoption  of  the  practice  speedily  become 
familiar." 

The  Hon.  Abram  S.  Hewitt,  New  York : 
"  Eliminating    the    question    of    sentiment, 
which  depends  largely  upon  custom,  it  seems 
to  me  that  cremation  is  the  only  sensible  mode 


Appendix.  155 

of  disposing  of  the  dead.  I  can  imagine  no 
argument  against  it,  while  all  the  considerations 
of  public  health  are  in  its  favor." 


The  Rev.  R.  Heber  Newton,  D.D.,  New 
York: 

"  I  am  glad  of  an  opportunity  of  expressing 
my  interest  in  the  work  of  the  Cremation  So- 
ciety. For  many  years  I  have  thoroughly  be- 
lieved in  cremation  on  a  variety  of  grounds. 
Having  tried  to  make  my  life  one  of  usefulness 
to  my  fellows,  I  object  to  the  possibility  of  in- 
juring any  one  after  I  am  dead.  The  thought 
that  what  I  cannot  take  away  with  me  to  a 
higher  form  of  life  is  to  be  left  as  a  means  of 
poisoning  life  is  abhorrent  to  me.  I  prefer  that 
my  body  shall  be  so  disposed  of  as  to  put  this 
out  of  the  question.  The  religious  objection 
has  always  been  nonsensical  to  my  mind.  Be- 
lieving thoroughly  in  a  life  to  come,  I  have  not 
the  slightest  notion  of  that  higher  life  being 
conditioned  in  any  possible  way  by  the  way  in 
which  we  get  into  it.  Nothing  but  the  stupid 
prejudice  of  a  blind  orthodoxy,  could  allow 
any  notion  of  this  kind  to  have  weight.  In  so 
far  as  it  does  have  weight,  it  ought  to  be  ex- 
posed and  ridiculed.  I  have  also,  for  years, 
had  the  intensest  horror  of  thinking  of  any  one 
dear  to  me  undergoing  the  noxious  process  of 


156  Appendix, 

decomposition,  as  we  have  made  sure  that  it 
shall  be  made  noxious  by  our  whole  mode  of 
interment.  I  want  those  I  love  to  pass  from 
this  life  to  a  higher  life  without  any  such  abhor- 
rent decomposition  of  the  form  once  dear  to 
me. 

"  On  every  hand  cremation  has  commended 
itself  to  my  judgment,  and  I  am  sure  that  it  is 
destined  to  prevail  in  the  future.  I  expect  to 
be  disposed  of  thus  myself,  and  do  not  know 
of  any  expression  of  opinion  which  I  could 
offer  that  would  have  more  weight  than  this." 

Andrew  Carnegie,  New  York : 

"  Cremation  must  be  ranked  as  one  of  the 
greatest  hygienic  improvements  of  a  progres- 
sive age.  Its  universal  adoption  is  most  desir- 
able, and  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  people  of 
this  country — always  heretofore  quick  to  be 
educated  in  matters  of  reform — will  soon  rec- 
ognize that  cremation  is  something  with  which 
religious  prejudice  or  false  sentiment  should 
not  be  allowed  to  interfere  any  more  than  with 
the  other  sanitary  expedients  of  modern  life. 
I  am  convinced  that  the  adoption  of  cremation 
in  preference  to  burial,  in  all  the  enlightened 
communities  of  this  and  other  progressive 
countries,  is  only  a  question  of  time.  Person- 
ally, of  course,  I  am  heartily  in  favor  of  it." 


Appendix,  157 

The  Right  Rev.  Henry  C.  Potter,  P.  E. 
Bishop  of   New  York  : 

"  In  reply  to  your  inquiry,  I  beg  to  say  that 
I  have  no  prejudice  unfavorable  to  cremation, 
and  indeed  in  view  of  the  curiously  inadequate 
and  singularly  unintelligent  arguments,  attacks 
and  denunciations  which  have  been  employed 
by  those  who  are  hostile  to  it,  I  have  been 
rather  disposed  to  sympathize  with  those  who 
are  seeking  to  introduce  it." 

Mrs.  J.  C.  Croly  ("Jennie  June"),  New 
York. 

"  I  am  heartily  in  sympathy  with  the  Crema- 
tion Society,  considering  such  disposition  of 
human  remains  as  the  wisest,  cleanest,  most 
healthful  and  economical  method  of  disposing 
of  what  is  no  longer  of  any  use,  and  must  in 
time  become  a  positive  source  of  injury." 

The  Hon.  George  Hoadly,  Ex-Governor  of 
Ohio: 

*'  I  thoroughly  believe  in  cremation  ;  it  is  the 
most  wholesome  and  best  method  of  disposing 
of  the  dead.  I  should  prefer  for  myself  and 
those  I  love,  if  cremation  were  common,  to 
adopt  it,  rather  than  to  leave  the  body  to 
moulder  in  the  ground  and  be  the  prey  of 
worms." 


158  Appe7idix, 

Clement  Cleveland,  i\I.D.,  New  York: 
''  I  am  heartily  in  favor  of  the  reform  you  are 
advocating.  The  sanitary  consideration  is  the 
one  that  chiefly  influences  me,  and  to  my  mind 
is  of  such  vital  importance  that  it  outweighs  all 
conceivable  objections." 

James  Lewis  Howe,  M.D.,  P.H.D.,  Louis- 
ville, Ky.  : 

"  I  do  not  believe  there  is  a  single  argument 
against  cremation  which  is  worthy  the  name  of 
argument." 

Charles  Francis  Adams,  Boston  : 

"  I  have  never  been  able  to  understand  any  of 
the  arguments  against  cremation.  The  religious 
argument  certainly  has  no  bearing  on  the  subject. 

''  As  a  matter  of  sentiment,  I  fail  to  see  why 
we  should  rather  consign  the  remains  of  those 
we  love  to  the  tender  mercies  of  worms  than 
to  the  tender  mercies  of  heat. 

''  The  sanitary  argument  is,  of  course,  all  in 
favor  of  cremation.  By  burying  the  bodies  of 
the  dead  in  the  ground,  we  preserve,  in  so  far 
as  we  can,  and  spread,  germs  of  disease.  Under 
these  circumstances,  I  am  unable  to  see  what 
the  modem  system  of  burying  corpses  in  the 
soil  has  to  rest  upon,  except  custom  and  that 
prejudice  which  springs  from  custom." 


Appendix,  159 

The  Rev.  John  L.  Scudder,  Pastor  of  the 
First  Congregational  Church,  Jersey  City  : 

''  I  beHeve  in  cremation  with  ail  my  heart» 
and  consider  it  the  only  proper  method  of  dis- 
posing of  the  dead.  The  arguments  in  its  favor 
are  overwhelming.  I  am  glad  to  see  that  preju- 
dice and  blind  conservatism  are  rapidly  giving 
way  to  nineteenth-century  common-sense.  I 
prophesy  that  inside  of  twenty-five  years  cre- 
mation will  become  well-nigh  universal  in  this 
country.  Advancing  civilization  demands  it 
and  will  have  it.  My  own  sister  was  cremated 
at  Fresh  Pond,  and  my  father,  Rev.  Henry  M. 
Scudder,  D.D.,  for  so  many  years  pastor  of  the 
Central  Congregational  Church,  New  York,  has 
left  orders  to  the  effect  that,  upon  his  decease, 
his  body  shall  be  brought  to  this  country  from 
Japan,  where  he  is  now  residing,  and  cremated 
in  the  State  of  New  York.  It  is  also  my  desire 
and  command  that  when  I  die  my  body  shall 
be  disposed  of  in  a  similar  manner.  I  prefer  a 
'■  fiery  chariot '  to  being  eaten  up  by  worms." 

Mrs.  Lippincott  (  "  Grace  Greenwood  "  )  : 

"  I  have  given  a  great  deal  of  serious  thought 
to  the  subject  of  cremation,  and  heartily  en- 
dorse all  movements  in  that  direction.  The 
world,  even  the  Christian  world,  must  come  to 
it    finally — though    it    denounce    it    now    ever 


1 60  Appendix. 

so  sternly  as  '  a  heathen  custom.'  The  world 
must  come  to  it,  or  see  the  above-ground  living 
poisoned  by  their  under-ground  dead.  For 
economic  as  well  as  sanitary  reasons  I  would 
advocate  cremation.  I  saw  much  of  the  work- 
ing of  the  system  at  Milan  ;  saw  that  it  took  a 
great  burden  of  care  and  expense  from  poor 
families,  bereaved  and  left  in  straitened  cir- 
cumstances. Surely  it  is  the  simplest,  the 
surest  and  purest  manner  of  rendering  '  ashes 
to  ashes  ' — of  giving  back  our  mortal  part  to 
the  immortal  elements." 

Professor  Felix  Adler,  New  York  : 
"  My  views  on  the  subject  of  cremation  are 
entirely  in  accord  with  your  own.  I  believe 
that  this  method  of  disposing  of  the  remains  of 
those  who  were  dear  to  us  in  life  is  more  rever- 
ent, more  in  harmony  with  refined  feelings, 
besides  being  obviously  superior  on  grounds  of 
public  health,  to  the  usual  practice  of  earth- 
burial.  I  trust  that,  thanks  to  your  efforts  and 
those  of  your  coadjutors,  cremation  will  be 
received  with  increasing  favor  by  all  enlight- 
ened persons  in  the  community." 

The  Rev.  D.  S.  Rainsford,  D.D.,  Rector  of 
St.  George's  Church,  New  York  : 

"■  You  may  quote  me  as  heartily  favoring  the 
objects  of  your  Company." 


Appendix.  1 6 1 

Charles  A.  Bacon,  M.D.,  Washington,  D.  C. : 

"  The  sanitary  necessities  of  civilized  life 
render  this  reform  inevitable — an  affair  of  time 
only.  Cremation  must  be  adopted  by  all  civil- 
ized communities  as  a  preventive  to  disease, 
and  the  day  when  this  shall  be  the  adopted 
method  of  disposing  of  the  remains  of  our  dead, 
is  not  far  distant." 

Col.  Thomas  W.  Knox,  New  York: 

"  I  am  heartily  in  favor  of-  cremation,  and 
have  directed  in  my  will  that  my  body  shall  be 
cremated,  and  the  ashes  placed  at  the  disposal 
of  my  nearest  relatives  and  friends. 

"  The  Cremation  Company  and  the  Crema- 
tion Society  have  done  excellent  work,  and  are 
to  be  warmly  commended  for  their  long  and 
earnest  battle  against  prejudice  in  its  various 
forms." 

Kate  Field,  Washington,  D.  C. : 

"  I  am  a  cremationist  because  earth-burial 
poisons  earth,  air  and  water,  and  consequently 
breeds  disease  among  the  living.  .  .  .  Cre- 
mation is  not  only  the  healthiest  and  cleanest 
but  the  most  poetical  way  of  disposing  of  the 
dead.  Whoever  prefers  loathsome  worms  to 
ashes  possesses  a  strange  imagination." 


1 62  Appendix. 

The  Hon.  Charles  W.  Horner,  Washington^ 
D.  C.  : 

''  I  have  so  far  acted  on  the  opinion,  now 
rapidly  becoming  universal,  that  cremation  is. 
the  best  way  for  the  disposal  of  dead  bodies,  as 
to  make  it  one  of  the  clauses  of  my  last  will." 

The  Rev.  Edward  Everett  Hale,  D.D.,  Bos- 
ton : 

'^  I  have  no  doubt  that  cremation  will  work  its 
way  into  general  favor,  and  I  am  glad  to  think 
so.  I  am  glad  to  remember  that  in  Old  and 
New,  now  more  than  fourteen  years  ago,  I 
published  a  well-considered  article  urging  the 
reform  in  burial." 

Robert  P.  Porter,  Editor  of  The  Press,  New 
York: 

''  In  reply  to  your  letter  asking  my  opinion  in 
relation  to  the  advantages  of  cremation  as  a 
means  of  disposing  of  the  dead,  I  beg  leave  to 
say  that  I  am  heartily  in  favor  of  it,  and  that  I 
look  forward  to  the  day  when  it  will  be  univer- 
sally adopted  by  civilized  nations." 

Moncure  D.  Conway,  New  York  : 

"  I  regard  the  wholesale  poisoning  of  the 
earth  and  its  fountains  by  dead  bodies  as  the 


Appendix.  163 

survival  of  a  grossly  materialistic  conception  of 
the  future  life.  Surely  our  New  World  civili- 
zation should  replace  the  loathsome  vault  with 
the  pure  urn." 

Lucy  Stone,  of  the  American  Woman  Suf- 
frage Association,  Boston : 

''  I  am  decidedly  in  favor  of  cremation.  On 
sanitary  grounds  alone  it  seems  to  me  to  be 
wholly  desirable." 

Edgar  Fawcett,  New  York  : 

"  I  am  a  believer  in  cremation.  I  feel  'con- 
vinced that  it  is  one  of  those  reforms  which  will 
some  day  be  universally  adopted." 

Rose  Elizabeth  Cleveland  : 

"  I  am  very  willing  to  say  that  I  have  long 
felt  that  by  cremation  the  body  after  death  is 
returned  most  properly  to  its  predestined  ashes. 
On  the  theory  I  am  very  clear,  and  in  my  own 
case  I  should  desire  that  cremation  should  take 
place." 

The  Rev.  William  Hayes  Ward,  D.D.,  Editor 

of  The  Independent  : 

'*  I  am  aware  of  no  argument  against  crema- 
tion that  deserves  consideration,  and  I  regard 


1 64  Appendix, 

that  method  of  disposing  of  the  bodies  of  the 
dead  as  intelligent  reason  and  unpen^erted 
taste." 

Henr}^  Tuck,  M.D..  Vice-President  of  "'  The 

New  York  Life  Insurance  Co."  : 

"  I  am  glad  of  the  opportunity  of  again  ex- 
pressing my  hearty  approval  of  the  practice  of 
cremation." 

Ella  Wheeler  Wilcox : 

"  I  heartily  approve  of  cremation.  In  the  first 
place,  it  is  cleanly  ;  in  the  second  place,  it  is 
economical.  It  helps  along  nature.  The  body 
must  eventually  turn  to  dust,  and  why  not  turn 
it  to  dust  by  cremation  rather  than  have  it  de- 
compose in  the  ground.  Then,  again,  the  in- 
crease in  population  and,  consequently,  death, 
must  render  this  mode  of  disposing  of  the  dead 
eventually  necessar^^  I  cannot  see  why  the 
old  Greek  custom  was  ever  done  away  with." 

The  Rev.  John  W.  Chadwick,  Brooklyn: 

''  I  do  not  think  I  can  do  better  than  refer 
you  to  an  article  in  The  Forum  (No.  3,  if  I  re- 
member rightly;  for  my  ver^^  favorable  opinion 
of  cremation,  which  I  am  not  likely  to  change 
to  a  less  favorable  opinion  at  any  time." 


Appendix.  165 

William  Waldorf  Astor,  New  York  : 

"  You  ask  my  opinion  of  cremation.  I  think 
the  opposition  to  it  has  largely  originated  in  an 
ignorant  prejudice.  The  objections  raised 
against  it  have  certainly  lost  much  of  their 
force  in  public  estimation.  Sanitary  considera- 
tions are  strongly  in  its  favor,  and,  as  concerns 
sentimental  feelings,  it  seems  to  me  there  is 
much  to  recommend  a  total  and  immediate 
destruction  of  the  body  after  death." 

Edgar  Saltus,  New  York  : 

*'  I  am  an  enthusiastic  believer  in  crema- 
tion." 

Lillie  Devereux  Blake,  New  York : 

"  You  may  use  my  name  as  that  of  an  advo- 
cate of  cremation,  as  I  certainly  think  it  the 
most  desirable  method  of  disposing  of  the 
bodies  of  our  dead." 

Marshall  P.  Wilder,  New  York  : 

"'  I  am  unable  to  see  any  valid  objection  to 
cremation,  and  to  my  mind  it  seems  to  be  in 
consonance  with  the  spirit  of  the  age." 

The  Rev.  Theodore  C.  Williams,  New  York : 

''  I  believe  that  merely  on  grounds  of  feeling, 

the  considerations  of  decent  respect  due  to  the 


1 66  Appendix. 

remains  of  the  dead  are  increasingly  in  favor  of 
cremation.  The  grave,  the  tomb,  are  neces- 
sarily revolting  to  any  imagination  that  looks 
beyond  the  surface.  Cremation,  on  the  con- 
trary, can  suggest  none  but  pure  and  elevated 
conceptions.  I  find  large  numbers  of  persons, 
especially  young  people,  who  express  a  desire 
for  this  reform." 


The  late  Samuel  L.  M.  Barlow,  New  York  : 

"  Apart  from  the  question  of  sentiment 
merely,  it  seems  to  me  that  there  is  but  one 
rational  method  of  disposing  of  our  dead,  and 
that  is  by  cremation.  When  this  question  is 
understood,  all  the  objections  to  it  that  I  have 
heard  will  vanish,  and  we  shall  through  crema- 
tion avoid  all  the  repulsive  features  which  are 
inseparable  from  all  present  forms  of  earth- 
burial,  and,  what  is  of  more  consequence,  the 
dangers  to  the  general  public  health  which 
attend  the  present  system." 

Henry  M.  Taber,  New  York : 

"  I  have  carefully  considered  the  subject  for 
many  years,  and  am  well  satisfied  of  the  advan- 
tages afforded  by  cremation  over  burial.     The' 
sanitary  reason  alone  ought  to  have  sufficient 
weight  to  override  every  objection  that  can  be 


Appendix,  167 

■offered,  and  will  in  time  demand  its  general 
adoption  in  the  interest  of  the  living  (if  for  no 
other  reason)." 

Mme.  Alice  D.  Le  Plongeon,  Brooklyn  : 

**  I  am  most  decidedly  in  favor  of  burning 
the  dead,  and  cannot  comprehend  why  so  many 
object  to  it.  The  terrible  diseases  that  from 
time  to  time  cast  communities  of  human  beings 
into  an  abyss  of  grief,  would  lose  their  hold  in 
a  short  time  if  the  victims  were  promptly  con- 
signed to  the  purifying  action  of  the  flames. 
What  possible  good  can  there  be  in  burning 
clothes  and  furniture,  if  the  infected  flesh  be 
allowed  to  remain  in  existence.  In  1868  there 
was  a  dreadful  epidemic  of  yellow  fever  in 
Lima,  Peru  ;  as  many  as  three  hundred  patients 
-dying  each  day.  From  the  beginning,  Dr.  Le 
Plongeon,  then  practicing  in  that  city,  urged 
the  cremation  of  the  dead.  It  was  impossible 
to  bring  the  public  mind  to  contemplate  such  a 
course.  Finally  an  arrangement  was  made  to 
keep  large  fires  on  the  trenches  filled  with 
•corpses,  public  attention  not  being  drawn  to 
the  fact.  At  once  the  plague  abated  and  soon 
died  out. 

^'  Do  mourners  ever  reflect  what  a  disgusting 
sight  would  meet  their  gaze  if  the  flower-laden 
sod  was  lifted  from  the  remains  of  their  beloved 


1 68  Appendix, 

ones?  The  thought  is  terrible  !  To  my  mind, 
rapid  incineration  rids  death  of  half  its  horror. 
The  sacred  frame  that  has  been  so  long  inhab- 
ited by  the  dear  friend  is  wafted  to  the  pure 
element,  instead  of  being  trod  beneath  the  feet 
of  coming  generations.  Often  and  often  have 
we  seen  in  ancient  deserted  cities,  skulls  kicked 
about  like  balls  (by  unthinking  fools  to  whom 
nothing  is  sacred),  and  the  sight  has  aroused  a 
thousand  thoughts.  .  .  .  Unless  the  ocean 
waves  engulf  me,  I  trust  that  some  friend  will 
kindly  see  my  remains  confided  to  the  fiery 
furnace." 

The  Rev.  J.  E.  Raymond,  New  York: 

"Any  objection  to  the  practice  of  cremation 
must  be  founded  either  upon  ignorance,  super- 
stition, or  sentiment.  The  enlightened  Chris- 
tian conscience  must  approve  it.  It  is  one  of 
those  great  reforms  which  are  possible  only 
in  an  age  of  scientific  progress,  and  which 
make  their  way  in  spite  of  bigotry  and  con- 
servatism. When  prejudice  and  fanaticism 
are  overcome,  the  adoption  of  cremation  will 
be  almost  universal.  It  is  only  a  matter  of 
time." 

Views  of  "  Shirley  Dare,"  from  The  Epoch  of 
November  23,  1888  : 


Appendix,  1 69 

"  From  the  first  mention  of  cremation,  I  have 
had  but  one  opinion,  that  it  is  the  only  safe, 
Christian,  becoming  way  of  disposing  of  the 
dead.  Fifteen  years  ago  I  wrote  directions  to 
have  my  own  body  cremated  at  last,  and  the 
only  horror  death  holds  for  me  is  that  the  wish 
may  by  any  chance  be  unfulfilled.  How  can 
we  leave  our  friendless  dead  to  the  slow  changes 
and  deformity  of  the  grave?  How  can  we  bear 
to  poison  earth  and  air  by  reminders  of  what 
was  dearest  on  earth  to  us  ?  The  most  fearful 
and  heathenish  of  all  the  mockeries  which  de- 
face this  half-civilized  age  of  the  world  are  its 
burials,  in  which  we  leave  our  beloved  to  a  fate 
impossible  to  think  of.  No  wonder  the  words 
*  grave  '  and  '  hell '  are  interchangeable  in  Scrip- 
ture." 

Views  of   Frances   E.  Willard,  as  expressed 
in  her  Glimpses  of  Fifty  Years. 

"  I  have  the  purpose  to  help  forward  pro- 
gressive movements,  even  in  my  latest  hours, 
and  hence  hereby  decree  that  the  earthly  mantle 
which  I  shall  drop  ere  long,  when  my  real  self 
passes  onward  into  the  world  unseen,  shall  be 
swiftly  enfolded  in  flames  and  rendered  power- 
less harmfully  to  affect  the  health  of  the  living. 
Let  no  friend  of  mine  say  aught  to  prevent  the 
cremation  of  my  cast-off  body.     The  fact  that 


170  Appendix. 

the  popular  mind  has  not  come  to  this  decision 
renders  it  all  the  more  my  duty,  who  have  seen 
the  light,  to  stand  for  it  in  death,  as  I  have 
sincerely  meant  in  life  to  stand  by  the  great 
cause  of  poor,  oppressed  humanity." 


REGULATIONS 

OF  THE  UNITED  STATES  CREMATION 
COMPANY  (LIMITED)  GOVERNING 
INCINERATION. 

I.  Applications  for  incineration  must  be  made 
at  the  office  of  the  Company,  No.  62  East 
Houston  Street,  New  York  City. 

II.  Each  appHcation  must  be  made  by  the 
person  having  charge  of  the  disposal  of  the  body, 
or  his  representative  ;  a  blank  form  prepared 
by  the  Company  must  be  filled  out  and  filed  in 
the  office  of  the  Company. 

III.  On  the  filling  out  of  said  application 
blank,  payment  of  the  incineration  fee,  and  pre- 
sentation of  the  Physician's  Certificate  stating 
time,  place,  and  cause  of  death,  an  order  direct- 
ing the  incineration  will  be  given  the  applicant ; 
to  this  order  the  undertaker  in  charge  of  the 
body  must  have  attached  the  customary  certifi- 
cate of  the  Board  of  Health,  and  such  other 
permits  as  may  be  prerequisite  to  a  lawful  inter- 
ment in  the  State  of  New  York  and  the  town- 
ship and  county  where  the  Crematory  is  located. 

171 


1 72  Regulations, 

Upon  the  arrival  at  the  appointed  hour  of  the 
remains  at  the  Crematory,  this  order,  with 
the  said  certificate  and  permits  attached,  must 
be  deHvered  to  the  Superintendent.  This  rule 
is  imperative,  and  unless  the  order  is  accom- 
panied by  the  necessary  certificate  and  permits 
in  due  form,  the  incineration  will  not  be  allowed 
to  take  place. 

I\'.  Every  incineration  shall  be  attended  by 
some  relative  of  the  deceased  or  representative 

of  the  family. 

V.  The  price  of  incineration  is  $35,  always 
payable  in  advance. 

VI.  The  body  may  be  conveyed  to  the 
Crematory  in  such  a  manner  as  the  friends  of 
the  deceased  may  select ;  where  desired  the 
Company  will  convey  the  body  to  the  Crema- 
tory, at  an  expense  not  exceeding  the  usual 
charge  for  like  service. 

VII.  Xo  special  preparation  of  the  body  or 
clothing  is  necessar\^  The  body  is  always 
incinerated  in  the  clothing  as  received. 

VIII.  It  is  expected  that  the  funeral  services 
will  terminate  prior  to  the  removal  of  the  body 
to  the  Crematory ;  but  where  desired,  ceremonies 
or  services  may  be  held  at  the  Crematory  in 
connection  with  the  incineration,  without  any 
extra  charge. 


Regulations,  173 

IX.  The  coffin  in  which  the  body  is  carried 
to  the  Crematory  is  never  allowed  to  be  re- 
moved from  the  building,  but  is  burned  after 
the  incineration. 

X.  In  every  instance  of  death  from  conta- 
gious disease  the  -coffin  will  be  burned  with  the 
body,  and  no  exposure  of  the  body  will  be 
permitted. 

XL  Incineration  may  be  as  private  as  the 
friends  of  the  deceased  desire.  On  the  day 
following  the  incineration  the  ashes  will  be 
deliverable  at  the  office  of  the  Company,  in  a 
receptacle  provided  by  it  free  of  cost. 

XII.  On  one  day's  notice  bodies  coming 
from  a  distance  will,  on  their  arrival  in  New 
York  or  Jersey  City,  be  received  by  the  Com- 
pany's undertaker,  who  will  procure,  where  the 
relatives  desire  it,  the  necessary  permits  and 
take  complete  charge  of  all  arrangements. 

Further  information  can  be  obtained  on  ap- 
plication personally  or  by  letter  at  the  Com- 
pany's office    in  New  York  City. 


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